There aren’t many places of legends outside of Johnson City that I can say I’ve actually been to. I would love to visit Mount Pleasant and look for Bigfoot in the numerous locations he’s been sighted in. However, I have been to the place of, not a cryptid, but a legend.
Around the mountains of North Carolina is a little town named Blowing Rock. I’ve only ever stopped in one place within the town’s borders, otherwise it serves as a shortcut through the mountains whenever my sister visits her boyfriend in South Carolina.
The one place we stop at is the place where Blowing Rock earned its name. I’d almost forgotten its existence until my fiancée, Quinn, went with us and my mom decided to stop in at the gift shop that also serves as the entrance to the famous collection of rocks.
The legend is from earlier days of colonization and tells how a Chickasaw chieftain hid his daughter away from the white men who liked her. Instead of the men he had feared, a Cherokee warrior earned her affections instead.

(Contributed/exploremorenc.com)


If you decide to pay a small fee, you can walk right up to the edge of the blowing rock, which has mysterious winds that blow upwards.
These winds are said to have begun when, seeing a sign that his tribe needed him, the soldier flung himself from the cliff. His love prayed for his return and so the Great Spirit did, bringing him up from the same cliff he’d left.
According to Romantic Asheville, that cliff is 4,000 feet high, and I can only imagine that the Great Spirit must have been truly moved by their love.
This isn’t the story of a Cryptid, but it is the story of a very famous legend that I have always had a love for and for someone with some money for gas, I heavily recommend checking out the area. At least to me, I can still feel their love in the air.

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