Soco Gap

On Saturday, I rode across Soco Gap between Haywood and Jackson Counties to head down into the Cherokee Boundary Lands. I wanted to visit the casino because it has a Gordon Ramsay "Street Food" court, and I wanted to see what the famous chef's take on street tacos was like. (Spoiler: Gordon Ramsay doesn't know anything about street tacos.)  We got good and soaked, the several of us bikers headed that way, during a wave of cold and driving rain that came across just then. 

Since I was doing 'little known facts of local history' on the main post, here's another one:

In Cherokee, the pass is known as Ahalunun'yi (ᎠᎭᎷᏄn'Ᏹ), meaning "Ambush Place" or Uni'halu'na (ᎤᏂ'ᎭᎷ'Ꮎ), meaning "where they ambushed;" named after the occasion, probably in the mid-18th century, when the Cherokees ambushed a party of invading Shawnees, all of which were killed except for one, who was sent back (without his ears) to tell his people of the Cherokee victory.

I admire the directness of the Cherokee naming convention. My guess is that there were many more ambushes at that gap. It's the natural 'head them off at the pass' location between Maggie Valley and the main homeland of the Eastern Band of Cherokee. It's not far from Big Witch mountain, which is just a bit to the west along the Blue Ridge Parkway. There are many witches in Cherokee mythology; I don't know which one that title means to connote.