Blue Waters Mountain Lodge

In another age and time, the almanacs had an enormous influence on just about all of the mountain folk.  Especially country folk who had few if any books outside the Bible.  The almanacs were filled with practical information.  Folks relied on them, for they told them...

When a young girl got a hankering to make herself a quilt you knew for a fact she had marrying in her head.  That was back in the sunbonnet-and-calico days, a time here in the mountains when quilt making and crocheting went hand-in-hand with courtship and marriage. ...

The antiquated dinner bell is a time honored reminder of delicious home-cooked meals.  But like many another sound once so familiar, it is seldom heard nowadays. For dinner bells and farm bells have gone the way of the cow-horn trumpet and conch-shell horn.  For some...

Mountain folk sprinkle their talk with proverbs and proverbial sayings.  Some of their language is pretty descriptive.  The expressions help them say what they feel about everything, covering the field of life unto death.  Whatever the occasion, a local is never at a...

There is a wonderful and comparatively unknown world of myth waiting to be mined along the highways and by-ways of these mountains.  To discover this bonanza of fancy, you must seek out the old ones and listen with the attentiveness and faith of a child to the things...

The past dies slowly back in the hills.  Old ways and old customs still prevail.  And there are folks with old memories and old tales. There are hand-hewn cabins and slow ticking clocks, quilting bars and battlin’ blocks.  There are split rail fences and log barns. ...

Strange things come to pass in the mountains.  Like “The Vivian”, a homemade 50-foot steamboat that plied the Little Tennessee in the early 1920’s with barges piled high with lumber. Or the whaleboat that never saw the sea, and the hair-raising ridge of the three...

The spine tingling, bugle-like call of the Plott hounds has been ringing through these hills for over 200 years.  They are the most famous bear dogs in all the land.  For downright courage and persistence, they have been the pick of many a mountain bear hunter since...