Tapoco

When I was a boy, my father was lead electrical engineer at the Alcoa Headquarters in Alcoa.  That meant he was involved in everything related to bringing power from various places to the South, East and West ALCOA plants that were in the city of Alcoa. I’m told Alcoa has shrunk their presence from those days-but they still smelt and fabricate aluminum there. Alcoa has since bought Reynolds Aluminum-but during the day-Reynolds “crap” was not allowed in the door of our house.

So periodically Dad would take us up into the mountains. Sometimes he had work to do at Cheoah, or Santeetlah. Other times it was just for time away from our house, which did not have air conditioning and thus was pretty hot in the summer. Being an employee of Alcoa, he had rights to use Tapoco lodge.

Thus, when the S.O. and I went back home from Franklin, I planned the trip so that we could stop and have lunch at Tapoco. Like the places noted in the other post, this was a trip back in time for me-especially since I had not darkened the doorstep of this lodge in over 35 years.

Tapoco Lodge, just a short walk from Cheoah Dam, is located in a community that reached a peak population in excess of 2,000 during construction of the Cheoah and Santeetlah dams. The Lodge was not built until 1930 and when a road reached the area a year later it was opened to the public. It has 10 guest rooms in the lodge, and five cabins with 15 rooms as well as a dining room that seats 90. In recent years it has been sold by ALCOA but remains open to the public.  The whole history can be found here and here.

The S.O. has no sense of direction-and as I discovered that also extends to not being able to read a map. So only by the grace of the fact that at least one of my remaining neurons, not yet expunged by beer-I remembered the turn onto 129 and after a detour around road construction at Santeetlah -we arrived only slightly late at the lodge:

Lets go inside shall we?

This is the dining room where we had lunch. The food was simple, but good:

And the game room looks exactly like I remember it-except for the gift shop, that’s new.

The S.O. suprised me, as I was going to go out the door and look around outside, she suggested that we play ping pong. “Sure why not?”

Turns out the S.O. is pretty good and can put a back spin on the ball a la the way the Chinese do. Soon we started playing for points and it became a 45 minute duel of honor. I won out, but only just barely. She only lost the last game because of a shot that missed the table by an RCH……

My manhood and moral superiority re-established, we went out side to look at the Cheoah River:

We also took a look around at the cabins, several of which I had stayed in when I was but a boy of 5, 6, 7, and 10. It looked to me that they had been fixed up a great deal:

The Tennis Courts looked a lot smaller than I remembered them-so too were the horsehoe pits. I think the pool is a new addtion that was not there when we used to visit:

As I mentioned earlier, some wise ( or not so wise depending on your point of view) decided that the road should be a Mecca for bikers and also for auto enthusiasts. As a result, Tapoco hosts gathering of motor machines-such as the Miata meet which was happening this weekend. Evidently they also host meet-up of Mini Coopers, if the photo above the front desk is to be believed. (Pretty cool video of these meetings is to be found here.)

As we left the Miatas started to arrive:

So there you have it. If you are in the area-and plan ahead, Tapoco is actually a pretty good place to stay for a relaxing weekend.