MOON HANDBOOKS SMOKY MOUNTAINS

Want to know about the backroad routes into Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the most scenic hikes and waterfalls? Done. Looking for details on bluegrass festivals and the inside scoop on Dollywood? You'll find them in here. Big or small, mainstream or obscure, every worthwhile sight and activity in the Smokies is covered in this book.

Moon Handbooks Smoky Mountains
1st Edition
Mike Sigalas & Jeff Bradley
ISBN 1-56691-366-7
$14.95
Purchase here through Amazon.com or visit Booksense.com to find your local independent bookseller.

Mike Sigalas's explorations of Southern Appalachia began in boyhood, when he played in the Smokies’ streams, reenacted Civil War battles with his siblings in nearby pastures, and visited the homes of his childhood heroes, Davy Crockett and Andrew Johnson, in nearby towns. Later, as a college student on Spring Break, he awoke one morning in his freezing steel-walled utility van to find himself snowed in at the Smokemont Campground. On warmer days, Mike and his wife Kristin climbed mountain peaks, hiked to the waterfalls, rafted the Nantahala, and browsed the shops of Highlands. Now a father, Mike’s achieves new kinds of feats, such as weaving through a throng of toddlers to squeeze his sons onto Thomas the Tank Engine during Dillsboro’s Day with Thomas Festival, and hiking to the top of Clingmans Dome pushing a hefty two-year-old in a stroller.
   Mike’s professional writing career began providentially in 1987, while he was working as a steamboat pilot and Jungle Cruise guide at Disneyland. An off-duty Frontierland popcorn vendor slammed into Mike’s 1970 Nova coupe in the employees’ parking lot. Mike pounded out the dent himself and used the insurance money to buy his first word processor, a $350 Amstrad. On this, he tapped out his first published articles, stories, and poems.
   Mike is the author of Moon Handbooks Charleston & Savannah, Moon Handbooks South Carolina, Moon Handbooks Coastal Carolinas, and Moon Handbooks North Carolina, and co-author of Moon Handbooks Smoky Mountains. He lives with his wife and sons in South Carolina, a few hours from the entrance to Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Other travel guides authored by Mike Sigalas:
Moon Handbooks Charleston & Savannah
Moon Handbooks Coastal Carolinas
Moon Handbooks North Carolina
Moon Handbooks South Carolina

Jeff Bradley was born and raised in Kingsport, a Tennessee town that once sentenced an elephant to death and, while Bradley was a guileless child, was the last place Elvis ever played second on the bill. Bradley learned about Tennessee at his mother's knee and other low joints. He later became a dump truck driver and got a taste of what it would be like to drive along country roads and get paid for doing so.
   He went off to the University of Tennessee intent on becoming a broadcaster, but a few weeks of sitting in classes with Neanderthal football players convinced him to switch to journalism. He did the smartest thing any male writer can do—marry a good woman who has a job—and began a career of freelance writing. He became a stringer for the New York Times, and this led to an offer to teach writing to Harvard freshmen.
   The chance to educate impressionable youth who paid sky-high tuition and hung on every word was irresistible, so Bradley and wife decamped to Massachusetts, where he quickly found that his Southern accent led people to respond slowly and distinctly, treating him like a benign rustic. While privately decrying the attitudes that Harvardians held toward Southerners, Bradley and two other Tennesseans never passed up a chance to hijack dinner parties with an endless repertoire of snake stories, tales of weird relatives, and descriptions of Baptist gospel disk jockeys.
   It finally dawned on Bradley that, short of loading up outlanders in buses and giving them personal tours of Tennessee, the best way to explain this remarkable state to infidels was to write a book about it.

Other travel guides authored by Jeff Bradley:
Moon Handbooks Tennessee