A fall weekend trip to Bryson City
I have a discouraging number of half-finished posts in the queue, including at least one other travelogue (our summer trip to Michigan!)… but also no hesitations about bumping this one to the top. In my last post, I wrote that we’d canceled our trip to Lake Lure in the wake of Hurricane Helene and wouldn’t be traveling to the North Carolina mountains this fall. The whole family was torn up about this, but John especially so. Once the storm passed, he stewed over what to do for days: travel to the Lake Lure Airbnb and use it as a base to volunteer with a local organization, leaving the kids with family or friends? Cancel the Airbnb and head to the Virginia mountains? Stay home entirely? While we felt called to volunteer, our original rental was without power and water. And though we love the Virginia mountains, it felt wrong to bail on our beloved NC in her time of need. As the days passed after the storm, the messaging out of Western North Carolina became more nuanced: yes, some areas were devastated and not ready to receive visitors, though they coveted our aid (and would for a long time). Other areas, however, were open and ready for business – and, in many cases, desperate for it. Fall tourism dollars are incredibly important to these towns, and the blanket messaging of “don’t travel to WNC” had really hurt them. So, following NC’s travel advisory, we rerouted our trip to Bryson City. We had wanted to visit for years, but had stopped short of Bryson City, in the far western reaches of the state, in favor of the more accessible mountain towns of Boone, Blowing Rock, or Asheville. With those off the table, we happily drove a tad farther – a little