It’s here! It’s here! It’s time for the annual GCA Fall Gala! There’s still time to make your reservation at Smoky Mountain Meadows campground. The bath houses at SMM are very nice and the campground has a variety of campsites. Some, but not all, of the campsites have water and electricity so if you want a site with hookups please be sure to specify that when you make your reservation. Also, SMM has 3 small cabins which can be rented ifyou aren’t really fond of camping.
Each person is responsible for making their own reservation. Please call SMM at (828) 488-3674 or (828) 488-3672 to make your lodging arrangements – be sure to tell them you are with the GCA when you make your reservation. Please send me an e-mail as well to let me know you will be joining us. It really helps me plan for the group dinner and paddling trips if I have a fairly accurate idea of how many people we are expecting. So far we have a trip on the Nanty sheduled for all three days. We also have a trip on the Tuckasegee River on Saturday. If we are lucky and get some more rain we will try to add trips that weekend. All of the natural flow trips will have to be “last minute” as there is no way to predict water levels this time of year. Trips on dam released rivers will be posted on the main page of the GCA website. Additional trips may be added but won’t actually be on the website. As we have done in the past, there will be a dry erase board located in the pavilion at SMM campground which will have trip information on it. The most recent, updated trip information will be on this board. We will be meeting at the pavilion at 9am on Saturday and Sunday mornings to get organized for trips. This will be your opportunity to sign up for a trip, make contact with the trip coordinator if you have not already done so and sign all waivers and other paperwork that might be necessary for the trip. All Friday trips will be listed on the website or announced via the GCA e-mail list. For Friday trips (and Saturday trips if you are not camping with us at SMM on Friday night) you will need to contact the trip coordinator directly to get trip details.
Everyone will be responsible for their own meals with the exception of Saturday night. We plan to have a group dinner and get together on Saturday night. We will have charcoal and grills set up at the pavilion. Each person should bring a meat or main dish to put on the grill (just enough for them) and a side dish or a dessert to share. We plan to have another rope throwing contest. Our current throw rope champion (GCA Pres Lamar Phillips) will be there to defend his title so get practicing now if you want to have any chance of taking away his title!! Weather permitting, we will have a group fire in the meadow adjacent to the pavilion after dinner. Be sure to bring a chair so you can join us there. If you can bring some firewood to contribute that would be very helpful.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at bkhaskell@comcast.net or you can call me at (678) 858-2012.
Lisa Haskell
GCA Recreation Chair
