turizmus

TOM Cassidy never married and spent much of his adult life living alone in a one-room cabin in eastern Tennessee. It’s said that he once commented that all a man needed was “a cot, stove, dresser, chair, fiddle and a pistol”— lucky for him, since that’s all his diminutive abode could hold. After Mr. Cassidy died in 1989, his cabin (with a 1950s Kitty Wells publicity photo still tacked to the wall) was boarded up and abandoned. But, happily, not forgotten.

Enter John Rice Irwin, 76, an old family friend, who acquired the shack and had it moved. Now it sits among 35 preserved log structures in his impressive collection, which dots the landscape at the Museum of Appalachia, in Norris, Tenn. One day this summer, sheep grazed in a field near one of the buildings, a beautiful cantilevered barn. Old-time tunes from a clutch of musicians up on a porch wafted lazily on the breeze.

With its down-home authenticity and its location hard by the mountains less than an hour from the Knoxville airport, the museum makes a perfect starting point for a trip into the heart of Appalachia.

Mr. Irwin started the museum by accident. In the late 1960s he bought an 1890s log house and furnished it with period items purchased at flea markets and auctions or found in the barns and attics of friends and family. “Like so many people, I liked to collect things, and that was sort of my hobby,” he said over a lunch of fried green tomatoes, chicken pot pie and cornbread salad in the museum cafe. “People began to talk about my cabin and come over and see it.” Soon curious locals were lining up on Sundays after church, and he began charging 50 cents for a tour.

One cabin led to another — all moved to his land in Norris — and the collection now includes furniture, farm tools, pottery, paintings, musical instruments and oddball items like a Civil War-era perpetual motion machine and a chair made of horseshoes. Hundreds upon hundreds of objects are accompanied by photographs and hand-written cards detailing the lives and times of their owners: “Although Granny Irwin washed, sewed, scrubbed, and cooked for her 10 brothers, she still found time to express her artistry and sentiments as evidenced by this ‘crazy quilt’ she made ca. 1900,” reads one card.

Visitors now pay $12.95, and about 100,000 drop by every year, finding their way from all over the country and around the world. “There are so many stories here,” Brenda Newman of Winchester, Ind., said as she and her sister, Diana Rees, toured their way through. In May the museum was named an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution.

Over the twisting roads, through rugged hills swathed in every imaginable shade of green, there’s much more to explore in the upland countryside where Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia and North Carolina all have their pieces of the Appalachians.

At the Cumberland Gap National Historic Park, about 50 miles to the north on Route 63, the visitor center recounts Indian life in the region, describes Daniel Boone’s building of the Wilderness Road and tells tales of the hundreds of thousands of pioneers who made their way west over it. The Pinnacle Overlook provides a bird’s-eye view of the gap itself, a crease in the otherwise largely impenetrable range. The gap changed hands four times during the Civil War.

A bit farther north, Route 119 leads deeper into the hill country. This time of year, the roadside is ablaze with golden black-eyed Susans and bright blue cornflowers.

“We’re a pretty well kept secret,” said Shirley Dodd, as she served a heaping plate of fried chicken livers, mashed potatoes and green beans at the Coal Bin, a thrift store and cafe in Benham, Ky., a tiny town that was once a prosperous coal camp. The Kentucky Coal Mining Museum, a collection of coal mining artifacts, dioramas, old photos and other mementoes, is next door; across the street is the restored Coal Miners Memorial Theater; and up the hill the Benham School House Bed & Breakfast puts up guests in a former elementary and high school that still has lockers in the hallways.

Nearby are the towns of Cumberland, where the Poor Fork Arts & Crafts Guild sells a wide variety of handicrafts, and Lynch, where starting in October, tourists will be able to descend several hundred feet into Portal 31, a defunct coal mine.

From Lynch, Route 160 will take you on an impressive ride up and over Black Mountain, the highest point in Kentucky at 4,145 feet, and on to the Virginia towns of Appalachia and Norton.

“Just remember, around here it’s Ap-pa-LATCH-a,” teased Bill Jones, who was sitting on the front porch of Country Cabin II, a bluegrass and old-time music concert and dance hall in Norton on a Saturday night. Northeasterners have a way of saying “Ap-pa-LAY-sha,” he explained, and it “tends to get under our skin.”

Mr. Jones is president of Appalachian Traditions, a nonprofit group that aims to promote the local mountain heritage. The original Country Cabin, which still stands across the street, was built in the late 1930s by the Work Projects Administration and used as a recreation center. Locals spent decades of Saturday nights there, clogging, flatfooting and two-stepping the night away. “If we had 45 people in there it was crowded, so most people would stand outside and listen to the music,” Mr. Jones said.

In 2002, Appalachian Traditions moved to its current, larger digs, where, on a good night, up to 150 people raise the roof. On this particular Saturday, Fast Train, a local group made up of fiddle, banjo, guitar and bass, soon had the joint jumping.

These mountains echo everywhere with great tunes and the sounds of dancing feet. Nearby in Hiltons, Va., members of the Carter family perform weekly at the Carter Family Fold. Bristol, a town that’s half in Virginia and half in Tennessee, calls itself the Birthplace of Country Music, and on Thursday nights there the Mountain Music Museum holds a bluegrass gathering called the Pickin’ Porch Show. Bristol is also a good place to browse through antiques shops and sample the biscuits and gravy at a classic diner, the Burger Bar.

Farther south, nestled between the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains, the lovingly restored town of Jonesborough, Tennessee’s oldest, gives road-trippers views of 18th- and 19th-century buildings and invites them to the International Storytelling Center. Of course, countless tall tales have made their way out of the hollows of Appalachia. Today, the center casts a wide net, and performers may be from just about anywhere. After a good yarn, sample the soup beans and cornbread at the Cranberry Thistle.

The mountains were around long before the towns, and you haven’t really seen them until you’ve done some exploring on foot. Great Smoky Mountains National Park, with miles of trails, is the most visited national park in the United States, with more than nine million people touring inside in 2006. Many head straight for Gatlinburg, Tenn., the famous tourist town that abuts the western edge of the park. On a summer day, visitors by the thousands jam its sidewalks and pack into its souvenir shops, antiques stores, pancake houses, barbecue joints and, believe it or not, three Ripley’s Believe It Or Not attractions. But if you look beyond the most popular spots, there is still solitude to be found in the Smokies.

In the center of the park, at the base of the Chimney Tops trail, which rises 1,700 feet over two miles, a sign goads reluctant hikers: “The View Is Worth the Climb.” Along the trail, the air is cool and damp, and dark-green thickets of rosebay rhododendron are dotted in summer with bunches of white blossoms as plump as Hostess Sno Balls. Water gushes and tumbles over rocks into large green pools.

A friendly young couple on their way down helpfully advised a first timer: “When you get to the top, follow the path to the right and use the branches to climb up the rocks. You’ll get a much better view.”

The last half of the trail is strenuous, but glimpses of the nearby ridges that peek through the trees are tantalizing motivators. And at the top, after the near vertical scramble up dark, slate-like rocks, the reward is all that could be hoped — cascades of hilly peaks, blanketed in a carpet of green.

Laura Dean, 41, visiting from Racine, La., sat on a rocky outcropping at the peak with her hiking companion Darren Hill, 48, and summed it up. “This is just phenomenal,” she said. “Really breathtaking.”

VISITOR INFORMATION

THE Museum of Appalachia (856-494-7680; www.museumofappalachia.com) is in Norris, Tenn., one mile east of Interstate 75 at exit 122. The Cumberland Gap National Historic Park (www.nps.gov/cuga; 606-248-2817) is at the point near Middlesboro, Ky., where Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky come together.

For food and lodging in Cumberland Gap, Tenn., try Webb’s Country Kitchen (602 Colwyn Avenue; 423-869-5877) and the Olde Mill Bed & Breakfast Inn (603 Pennlyn Avenue; 423-869-9839; $65- $185), in an old mill whose water wheel still turns. In Cumberland, Ky., handmade items are sold at the Poor Fork Arts & Craft Store (218 West Main Street; 606-589-2545).

The Kentucky Coal Mining Museum (606-848-1530; www.kingdomcome.org/museum) and the Coal Bin thrift store and cafe are on Main Street in Benham, Ky. The Benham School House Bed & Breakfast (100 Central Avenue; 606-848-3000; www.kingdomcome.org/inn) has rooms from $65 to $89 a night. Tours of Portal 31 (www.portal31.org), a defunct coal mine in Lynch, Ky., begin in October.

Music and dancing at the Country Cabin II (6034 Kent Junction Road, Norton, Va.; 276-679-2632; www.appalachiantraditions.net) start at 8 p.m. on Saturdays. The Country Inn & RV Park in Big Stone Gap (627 Gilley Avenue; 276-523-0374) has rooms at $45 to $61 a night.

The Mountain Music Museum (276-645-0035; www.mountainmusicmuseum.org) is in the Bristol Mall at 500 Gate City Highway in Bristol, Va. The Burger Bar (8 Piedmont Avenue; 276-466-6200) is downtown, off State Street.

In Jonesborough, Tenn., storytellers perform at 2 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday until Oct. 27 at the International Storytelling Center (116 West Main Street; 423-753-2171; www.storytellingcenter.com). The national story telling festival will be held Oct. 5 to 7.