Western Counties fall like Dominoes Part 2 (10-11Jul2023)

Although I was working most of the time for our stay in Cullowhee, we did get out for half a day in which I planned an ambitious romp through 4 counties.  It was a bit frenetic and and I certainly did not spend enough time and the bird lists were small, but I had a good time and felt as though I got a decent feel for the towns I visited.

We arrived at our first stop in Macon county right around lunch time and it was hot!  Macon County borders Georgia to the south and is mostly taken up by the vast Nantahala National Forest. The two major towns are Franklin and Highlands, both small towns that are really interesting and what my wife would classify as cute.  We focused this visit on Franklin but we did visit Highlands later in the trip.  I dropped George and Melissa in downtown Franklin so they could get an ice cream and check out the shops, and I headed down to the Little Tennessee River Greenway which is in walking distance from downtown.

It was hot as hell and I didn't get very far but it was a really nice spot and I vow to go back some day.  However, I did find a new bird for my year list that I didn't expect although it was good habitat.

Warbling Vireo!  It was silent so I feel lucky that I saw it fly into this tree.  Warbling Vireos love mountain towns with large trees bordering rivers or lakes.  It looks like per the below map that Franklin may be on the very edge of its breeding range.

Maybe they need to push that map down a tad based on my sighting, and others who I see now have had Warbling Vireo at the same spot.

Macon County is 39th on the list of NC counties by size with 515 square miles.  There are only 37k people and I think most of them are in Franklin and Highlands. Most of the rest of the county is rural mountainous with twisty roads.

The only name of famous people from Macon County I recognized was Eric Rudolph, the Olympic Park Bomber!   Apparently he was not born there but was raised in Nantahala, NC.  But anyway, it does say something about the somewhat lawless wild west feel some of these western NC counties has.  It breeds people who are anti government and a bit radicalized, but also some really nice folks that know how to live the good life.

After bagging my Warbling Vireo, I picked up Melissa and George and we headed to our next stop, Chatuge Dam in Clay County NC!  The Chatuge Dam is one of the many dams built during or immediately after Roosevelt's New Deal was implemented in 1933.  The county was in the Great Depression and Roosevelt dreamed up the New Deal as a way to stimulate the economy by putting people to work on infrastructure projects.  The Tennessee Valley Authority was one of those programs and involved the building of hydroelectric plants and dams across much of the south including some in NC.

The dam itself was an earthen one that you can walk across and we did just that.

The scenery in the lake created by the dam was really beautiful, and we resolved to rent a house on the shores of this lake in the future.  The islands in the center look uninhabited and the water was a really clear blue.

The lake was different than other lakes in NC that I am familiar with in that it is surrounded by forested mountains. 

The birding was slow but I did manage some decent shots of the many Eastern Kingbirds that were fly catching from the many perches that the dam had.

Kingbird after a nice bath in the lake.

We were buzzed by some fighter jets which was a bit of a surprise, not sure what base is nearby.

Clay County is one of the smallest counties in NC at only 214 square miles.  Forget famous people from here, there are only about 10k people in this sparsely populated county.  I like it!  However, we had more to see so we moved on to the next destination, Murphy.  Murphy is the county seat for Cherokee County.  

Cherokee County was named for the Cherokee, the indigenous tribe of this area of what we call the United States.  Let us never forget who was here first and what happened with the Trail of Tears. I hope this important history is not white-washed for our youth in the future. This county is the farthest western county in NC, bordered by Tennessee to the west and Georgia to the south.  I have romped around through this county extensively and in fact hiked a section of the Appalachian Trail through it.  The county is about middle sized as NC counties go, with 455 square miles.  The population is 28k and oddly enough only 2% of them identify as Native American.

The Murphy River walk is a nice trail that runs along the Valley River in downtown Murphy.  It continued to be hot as hell so the birds were again not so cooperative.  In fact, I didn't take any pics at all.  We only had a short walk and then we had to skedaddle again as we had a dinner reservation at Snowbird Mountain Lodge in Graham County.  

Ruby-throated Hummingbird.  

American Goldfinch

Snowbird Lodge is known birding hotspot due to their feeder setup.  It was already late in the evening and we had dinner reservations so I was only able to bird a bit, but it was a nice setup indeed.  

When I made the dinner reservations, I neglected to look at the prices. The prix fixe 3 course meal was $75 a head.  That's pretty much more than I usually would pay for a meal unless its guaranteed to be orgasmic.  In fact, I have never paid that much for a meal.  However, we committed and gave it a try.  The food was actually not very good so it was a huge bummer and I definitely regretted making the reservation, but now I know.  I suppose if you are staying up there, the food is included and maybe worth the cost.

The view from the porch is definitely nice but they didn't position the restaurant to take advantage of it.

Graham County is a relatively small county with only 222 square miles and only around 9k people.  To get to Snowbird you probably will drive through Robbinsville.  There is a huge mural in Robbinsville that celebrates their most famous son, Ronnie Milsap.  

If you don't know this country musician, check out this YouTube of Smoky Mountain Rain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC6bo3XJnVQ.

After dinner we drove back to our place in Cullowhee.  It was a whirlwind tour of 4 counties that day but we had fun despite being robbed by the dinner.

The next day I only got away long enough for a short visit to the river walk between Cullowhee and Sylva, which was nice but again hot and not birdy.

I neglected to mention that my parents had joined us in our VRBO and one evening we all made the trip to  Highlands NC.  On the way we stopped at Dry Falls which is so named because you can walk behind them and still stay dry.

They were absolutely stunning and almost as impressive as some of the falls we saw in Iceland.

For perspective, that is Melissa behind the curtain.

A side view with my pops heading behind the falls.

2 generations of Adams.

For the next installment, my smaller family unit moved to Fleetwood, NC which is just Northeast of Boone and about 3 hours north of Cullowhee.