Our Spring Extravaganza is planned for the weekend of May 14-16, 2010 which is this Friday! The canoeing and kayaking portion of this event will take place on various rivers in the Nantahala area, the camping portion of this event will be at Smoky Mountain Meadows Campground. @ 755 East Alarka Rd., Bryson City, 28713. -or- 35o 22.576’N 83o 27.409W.
The campground is open now and the phone number is 1 (828) 488-3672. If you cannot reach anyone at the campground number you can call 1 (864) 420-8077 and speak with Elaine. They offer tent sites with no water or electricity, sites with water and electric only, and full hook up RV sites. Be sure to specify that you are with the GCA when you make your reservation and RESERVE NOW so we have a good group! By the way, this campground has very nice bath houses for those of you who are interested in such things!
We have reserved the pavilion for use on Saturday night so that we can have a group dinner. The pavilion has a roof and picnic tables so that we can gather and eat even if it happens to rain on us. For the Saturday night dinner please bring whatever meat or main dish that you would like to eat (just enough for you) to put on the grill and a side dish to share. You will also need to bring whatever you want to drink. I will make sure we have grills, charcoal and paper plates, plastic cutlery, cups, etc. Meet at the pavilion at 7pm and we’ll get started! If you have any firewood, please bring a few pieces with you for our group campfire Saturday night.
We will have canoe and kayaking club trips on some of the local rivers – exact plans may change due to water levels. Right now there is a trip scheduled on the Upper Toccoa and Nantahala on Friday, a trip on the Pigeon, the Tuckaseegee and the Little Tennessee River for Saturday, and for Sunday there is another Toccoa trip and Nantahala trip. Except for the Tuck and the Nantahala which have scheduled releases, the trips will depend on water levels as to whether or not they are a go. I plan to check water levels on Saturday and Sunday mornings and hope to have the water level for each river posted in the Pavilion area by 9:00am. Please contact the trip coordinators in advance if you have questions, especially for the Friday trips or you won’t know where or when to meet! Hope to see you that weekend!
If you do make a reservation, please send me an e-mail at bkhaskell@comcast.net and let me know to be expecting you that weekend. Keep watching website for last minute details!
