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                  Judy Collins rock, or something like that

Our plans to have lunch with an old friend of mine fell through, so we found
ourselves with a day sans plans. Bunny suggested we just head west to see
what we could find, and with that nudge, I remembered two locations west of
Brevard [1] that we could visit.

First up, The Carolina Smokehouse [2], a pit-BBQ (Barbecue) restaurant in
Cashiers, NC [3] we visited a few years ago and liked. Since we were headed
that way anyway, that was as good a place to have lunch as any place. If you
find yourself in that neck of the woods, it's a good place to stop off for
some good barbecue.

After lunch, we turned north to Judaculla Rock [4], a large stone with a huge
number of petroglyphs carved into it—the most in a stone found anywhere east
of the Mississippi.

[It's hard to make out the petroglyphs due to erosion but they're there, all
100 or so.] [5]
[6]

Despite being the middle of nowhere, it was easy to find as it was well
marked with signs leading to its location, although parking was nearly non-
existant, as it was sitting off the side of a dead-end road leading to a
private residence.

Judaculla was a Cherokee [7] god of hunting, and one of the petroglyphs is
supposedly of his hand when he jumped down from his mountain home and used
the rock to steady his landing. Also, The Devil's Courthouse [8] is also
known as “Judaculla's Judgement Seat,” supposedly where he judged the courage
or virtue of the Cherokee.

We then made sure to drive back before it got dark. It's thrilling enough to
drive the hairpin turns to keep from slaming into or off of the cliffs (or
oncoming traffic) in full daylight; night time driving would crank that up to
eleven.

Tomorrow, we head back south to Chez Boca …

[1] http://brevardnc.com/
[2] http://www.thecarolinasmokehouse.com/
[3] http://www.cashiersnorthcarolina.org/
[4] http://www.appalachianhistory.net/2011/09/judaculla-rock.html
[5] gopher://gopher.conman.org/IPhlog:2014/11/04/thumb-judaculla.jpg
[6] gopher://gopher.conman.org/IPhlog:2014/11/04/judaculla.jpg
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee
[8] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2014/10/30.1

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