We left home at 9:37 on July 18,2007. We made it to Lake Junaluska, N.C. at 5:45 after a beautiful drive across the state of North Carolina. Lake Junaluska is near Cherokee and Maggie Valley, and the setting is gorgeous. The picture on the previous blog is the view from the outside amphitheater where the large cross is located. Lake Junaluska is a retreat owned and run by the United Methodist Church, and I suggested this for our first stop because my daughter, Amanda, had been so happy here. It is also convenient to Interstate 40, which was our main route to Tennessee. Amanda and several other members of her youth choir had come here for several summers for a week of music camp, and I had come to chaperone. The location and the beautiful music those teenagers performed made for a magical time for all of us, and the place did not disappoint.
We stayed for our first night at Lambuth Inn and discovered that a minister's convocation was in progress when someone mistook me for a Methodist preacher. The gentleman invited us to the evening worship service, which was held in the lakefront assembly center where my daughter and the other youth had performed during music camp. This is an excerpt from my diary entry that day.
Junaluska is still as beautiful as I remembered it, except that it lacks the beauty of Amanda's smile and lovely voice gracing its lakeside stage. I feel her loss keenly here, but I do not regret stopping. Here she was happy, here we made good memories and beautiful music.
During the worship service, they called everyone to the altar to be anointed with oil and placed the sign of the cross on our foreheads. I was reluctant to go up with my tear-stained face, but I'm glad I did it. We felt that we had received a blessing on our first day. It was a lovely way to begin a cross-country trip that was part sight-seeing and part pilgrimage.
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