Cowpokes

Lloyd sent me a great picture:



This photo was taken at "Ghost Town in the Sky", a tourist trap that is the re-creation of an old time western town. It is in Maggie Valley North Carolina. We (Lloyd and Sister Sue and I and Brother Ed and some girl Ed was dating - this was right before Dayna)went there on a nostalgia trip in about 1987. That is when this picture was made.

One of the coolest things about Ghost Town is that it is on top of a great, huge mountain and one has to ride a precarious, steep cable car 1,250feet straight up the mountain cars to get to it.

(I know neither of those people, but it is a good shot to show what the chairlift is like.)

At the top, the park was divided into several areas. Among these are the "Indian Village", "Mountain Town", and "Mining Town". The heart of the park is the re-created old Western town complete with a two saloons, a schoolhouse, bank, jail, and church, and various other businesses typical of the day. Each hour, a gunfight is staged right in the street. "Famous guest stars" often play the cowpokes. Once Tony Dow was there, and I got his autograph. Wonder where it is? There is also a "saloon show" every hour, with dancing girls.

We Taylor kids had been going to there all our lives because Mom and Dad so often took us to Lake Juneluska on summer vacation. Both Lake Juneluska and Ghost Town are in Maggie Valley North Carolina, which is in the Smokies. There are many funny stories that I can, and will, tell about those times, but one is that we often went to Juneluska with Dad's friends and their families - another clergy family. One year, the father of the other family was a pompous jerk. Mom got mad at him because he never tried to have fun with his sons. Mom finally talked him into taking the chairlift up Ghost Mountain. When he was halfway up, there was a cloudburst. The operators stopped the lift, and he just had to sit in the rain until it stopped. Mom still talks about it with great glee!!