Our first stop in the Great Smoky Mountains area was in Cherokee, North Carolina. It is located in a Cherokee Indian Reservation occupied by nearly 11000 Cherokee Indians. In the Oconaluftee Indian Village American Indians demonstrate the making of baskets, pottery, canoes, arrows, and blowguns.

Nowadays the Cherokee Indians earn a lot of money with their casino. They use the revenue mainly for health care and education of their children..

From Cherokee to Asheville we drove a short portion of the 469-mile (755 km) scenic Blue Ridge Parkway. It offers wonderful panoramas of the Southern Highlands. Unfortunately we had to drive a part of the way in fog. The construction of the highway was begun by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s to provide jobs for the unemployed during the Great Depression.

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