For Winter and Valentines, I wanted to take my kids on a short trip to a cabin with a hot tub... we love hot tubs in the cold, so relaxing! Anyways, we decided on Bryson City, NC, and stayed in Good Life Cabin 1. As much as we love the Smokies and the National Park, this is our first time coming here. We love charming small towns steeped in history, and Bryson City is just that.
The Town:
Bryson City is a cute, charming little town that you can walk the streets of, and enjoy all kinds of little shops, from antiques, books, souveniers, to restaurants, museums and the railroad. There are a few different places to park, and we were able to find a spot along the street pretty easily. We had a restaurant picked out that wasn't too far of a walk, Jimmy Mac's. Unfortuntately, we did not enjoy the experience here at all. The wait for food, to check out, get drinks, etc., was insane and it wasn't busy at all. The servers were also just very unorganized with no one seeming to know what was going on, which tables were theirs, etc. After we ate, we walked the streets and stepped into some shops. We loved the old buildings and how each building seemed to maintain the original charm. The bookstore, which used to be the drug store, still had the old barstools in it. It was so neat, and I just loved seeing what these buildings would have looked like so many years ago and I am so glad to see a town that preserves that history instead of modernizing it like most towns do.
The Cabin:
The view from our cabin
Inside the bookstore. I loved the old bar stools!
Friends of the Library bookstore that used to be Bryson City Drug Store
Swain County Heritage Museum and Visitor Center
One of the old general stores.
We rented Good Life Cabin 1 through Salt Mountain Properties. The cabin itself was so cute. It was very little, but everything we needed. It had a small kitchen, small living room, bathroom, bunk beds under the stairs, a loft bedroom, a porch overlooking the mountains, and a hot tub. When we first got there, it was freezing. It took a bit to get it heated up but they had a cute little gas fireplace that we enjoyed relaxing on the couch by. The hot tub was our main attraction though. We were SO excited for it. Very first morning though, it's somehow cooled down to 50 degrees. I had to call the owner who couldn't get someone to look at it til the next day. He was able to get it to heat back up, but only with me running back and forth every 15 minutes or so to press some buttons on it. Then, our last full day, a bad storm came through and knocked the power out. We didn't think too much of it at first, except Helena was sick and couldn't do much but lay on the couch, so she didn't really have anything to do. We had no service or wifi to know what was going on, and there were no candles or flashlights, our phones were dying, and it was beginning to get cold. About 4 pm, we had to make a decision on what to do because it was going to get too cold in the night to stay there with no power with a sick child. Luckily the power company told us it would be on soon, and sure enough, right before it was to get dark, it came back on. On our day to leave, Slade wakes up being sick now also, and spent the whole way home throwing up.
Overall, I am so incredibly thankful anytime I get to travel with my children. I love experiencing new places with them and just enjoying the quality time with them, and we love getting to be in the Smoky Mountains. There's just something about those mountains that I can't get enough of. As much as we travel, we have always had pretty good luck and never run into many problems, but this trip seemed to be one thing after another. We had planned to walk through Bryson City more, go to the Road to Nowhere Tunnel, and visit the Oconoluftee Visitor Center and try to see some elk, but with Helena being sick (turns out she has the flu) we just spent most of our time in the cabin, cuddled together next to the fire reading or watching TV... and that was actually so nice. Although Slade got a bit restless, it was fun just enjoying the warm cozy cabin in the mountains while it snowed, rained and stormed outside.
