If you’ve read some of my previous posts, you already know that I maintain a love/hate relationship with the North Carolina mountains. The beauty of the area is undeniable and the mountain culture is a significant part of my husband and children’s heritage. But traveling on the twists and turns of steep mountain roads is a harrowing experience for me, where the meanness of the sheer terrain seems to reflect the personality of the region.

Given that, I’ve spent anxious moments studying the map of North Carolina, knowing that my hundred county quest would require the daunting experience of navigating the counties in the rugged, craggy, westernmost tip of our state.

When our 50^th wedding anniversary rolled around and my mountain-bred husband Ron suggested we celebrate in a cabin in that very area, I was thrilled! This meant I’d have a trusted companion along for a ride I had been dreading driving on my own.

To make it even better, Ron and I both have a fondness for the Johnny Cash/June Carter tune, “Jackson,” whose opening lines “we got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout” perfectly describe our wedding on a sweltering hot July day. Since the song ends with the singers “going to Jackson” it seemed fitting for us to spend our anniversary in Jackson (County, NC).

Western North Carolina can lay claim with pride to being the home of the bluegrass music that grew out of these foothills and mountains. On the first stop of our journey in Haywood County, we found the city of Waynesville honors that musical tradition with a large sculpture on downtown Main Street.

From Haywood, we happily crossed the county line into Jackson County while blasting our signature tune and singing along with Johnny and June. Blue Ridge Bootleg in downtown Sylva turned out to be one of the coolest coffee shops I’d ever visited, with an incredible playlist going, a recording studio set up, and a spot for live music. As a bonus, the coffee was amazing!

Our cabin was perched high atop a peak in Macon County. Unfortunately, it rained most of the time we were there obscuring the spectacular view but I did get one good photo from our cabin porch. In nearby Franklin, Macon’s county seat, we had a delicious anniversary dinner at Gracious Plates on Main and I enjoyed the Blueberry Hill drink special whose mix of blueberries and lemon were tailor-made for me.

A solo drive on a rainy day was not the best way to travel through some of our state’s highest elevations but I was not to be deterred. I crept through fog to reach the town square in Clay County’s Hayesville where I found more sculptural depictions of the region’s cultural traditions, this time highlighting quilting as well as old-time music.

I was excited to make my way to Murphy, NC in Cherokee County. Although it’s a small town, it’s one that is famous to me and school kids all over the state since “From Manteo to Murphy” is a phrase we are all taught to describe the east-west, 545-mile width of our state.

Tucked into a fairly inaccessible corner of North Carolina, this area provides excellent cover for people who don’t want to be found. Eric Rudolph, the right-wing terrorist who bombed Olympic Park in Atlanta in 1996, holed up in the region for five years before being captured scavenging a dumpster in Murphy. Approximately 150 years before Rudolph’s arrest, hundreds of members of the Cherokee tribe successfully avoided forced relocation to Oklahoma by hiding out in these same rugged mountains.

I was sorry to leave the coziness of Murphy’s Rare Bird Emporium behind and venture out into a driving rainstorm. I arrived in Graham County to discover that the 11-mile stretch of road ahead of me is known as The Tale of the Dragon and said to be one of the most dangerous in America. I had hoped to visit the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest but the weather wasn’t favorable for hairpin curves or hiking old growth forests so all I saw of Graham was the county line.

The rain had let up somewhat when I visited Swain County, home to descendants of the indomitable Cherokee who evaded The Trail of Tears forced evacuation so many years ago. I was happy to see that The Museum of the Cherokee People is in a state of transition, shifting to telling stories from the perspective of the Cherokee themselves.

When Ron and I departed our mountain cabin, the sun came out at last and we made our final stop in Transylvania County with a visit in downtown Brevard to one of the world’s best toy shops, O.P. Taylor’s. After having watched countless episodes of the Andy Griffith Show, it took Ron pointing it out for me to catch the significance of the store’s name!

As I write these words several weeks after our trip, news has just come that Dolly Parton has departed this world. A beloved child of the Smoky Mountains, Dolly’s death is a reminder to me that for whatever negativity these hills may have bred, the region has also periodically birthed genuine beauty, a radiance embodied in the spirit of Dolly Parton. The title of this post comes from lyrics of Dolly’s song, Travelin’ Thru. The entire verse is worth remembering:

Oh, sometimes the road is rugged and it’s hard to travel on
But holdin’ to each other, we don’t have to walk alone
When everything is broken, we can mend it if we try
We can make a world of difference, if we want to, we can fly.

RIP, Dolly.

July 22 – July 26, 2026 – Counties #82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, and 89 – Haywood, Jackson, Macon, Clay, Cherokee, Graham, Swain, and Transylvania

It was late April and while a lingering drought was putting a hurting on much of the state, the lack of rain did at least mean we were experiencing a bounty of sunny days. Good for road trips but bad for the environment! I decided to take advantage of the pretty weather and head west to the mountains for an overnight trip.

You may not be familiar with Mocksville, NC but there was a time before the completion of I-40 when the most direct route between Chapel Hill and Asheville required driving through Mocksville. My husband Ron is from Asheville so Mocksville was infamous for the two of us in the 1970s as the town that could seriously slow down our travels back and forth.

I hadn’t thought of Mocksville in decades but it turned out to be a pleasant stop on my drive through the back roads of North Carolina. Like seemingly every town in America, Mocksville has an independently owned coffee shop so I was able to sit and take in the sights and sounds of downtown with coffee in hand. I wanted to get back on the road so I wasn’t able to stick around for that evening’s weekly coffee shop session of Jesus with Joe.

Alexander County is one of many North Carolina counties that is primarily rural. Bethlehem, the largest town in Alexander, has a population of around 4,500 people. From my days working in a statewide mentoring program, I remember talking with people from rural communities about the challenges of working with youth in areas without malls, movie theaters, swimming pools, or internet access. One thing you will find in Alexander County is vista after vista of breathtakingly beautiful, rolling green hills of which I unfortunately didn’t get any pictures! Those hills have yielded interesting gemstones in the past and the Alexander County town of Hiddenite is named after one of them.

In nearby Burke County, the terrain was more mountainous and the roads became more and more twisty. So twisty, in fact, that I had a hard time always knowing exactly which county I was in. A display at the Brown Mountain overlook let me know I was in Burke County but I’m not sure if the view I captured was in Burke or someplace else. I’d hoped to walk down to Linville Falls but again was tripped up by twists and turns along the way and was never able to find the paths that would lead me to the falls.

I ended my day at the Skyline Village Inn in Mitchell County, just south of Spruce Pine and right next to the Blue Ridge Parkway. I was surprised to find that I was the only guest in the hotel and, since the proprietors live next door, the only person in the building. I had the whole place to myself which felt equal parts liberating and unsettling.

The next morning I traveled to Linville Caverns in McDowell County. I had been to the caverns once before on a family trip with my husband and elementary-school age daughters. Unfortunately, the price of admission was too much for our financially strapped family then so we had to settle for perusing the gift shop. This time around, I was able to afford a ticket and got to see the caverns from the inside!

I left the caverns to seek out an elusive coffee cup house in Caldwell County I had heard about on WRAL’s Tar Heel Traveler. I’d tried unsuccessfully to find it the day before but was determined not to miss it before heading home. Finding places on dirt roads in areas with no internet service can be a challenge but my determination eventually paid off.

April 22 – 23, 2026 – Counties #76, 77, 78, 79, 80, and 81 – Davie, Alexander, Burke, Mitchell, McDowell, and Caldwell