She wanted to play the penny slots and I wanted to play in the poker room. My girlfriend and I have been to casinos in Vegas, Atlantic City, Foxwoods, Miami, and Biloxi so we didn't have high expectations for the backwoods of North Carolina. No street lights and no guardrails on the turns coming down the mountain on US19. The casino website even recommended using US19 which was even more dangerous than 441!! Strongly recommend coming in from the south on 441 during bad weather. The Casino website mentioned the road to Gatlinburg being closed due to an avelanche, but nothing about the terrible road conditions. Even when we left again heading south on 441, the roads were only cleared for the area immediately around the Cherokee village. The Indian reservation patrol came along about 20 minutes later and helped us back up and get going again, but we had over $300 damage to our front bumper. I've driven on snow before, but on US19 about 5 miles from the casino we ended up sliding into a small dirt embankment just inches from going down over a 1000 foot drop (no guardrails on the dangerous roads here).
We heard that both the 441 and US19 access roads were being salted due to the light snow, but it was a false report. Heard good reviews so we went to check out this casino.
