Is there camping at the fairgrounds?

Nothing is published either way, so plan as though there is none. The official listings cover admission, the parade and the programme and say nothing at all about overnight parking. The Cherokee Welcome Center on 828-359-6490 is the place to settle it.

What does fair week cost?

Admission is ten dollars Tuesday through Friday and twenty on the Saturday. Our units run $100 to $210 a night, with the campsite billed separately by whichever park you choose, and delivery quoted on the run out to it when you call. The tickets are the cheap part of this week.

Which campground, and does size matter here?

More than usual. The Cherokee KOA and Happy Holiday carry full hookups in town. Inside the national park there are none at all, and the Balsam Mountain access road bars anything over 25 feet, which our longest unit clears by a single foot.

Do you deliver out to Cherokee?

We do. It is about fifty five miles by road, running out on I-40 and US 74 rather than through any of the storm damaged corridors. We bring the unit to your site and connect it before your first day, so the parade is where the week starts.

RV Rentals for the Cherokee Indian Fair

The fair takes the first Tuesday to Saturday of October on the Qualla Boundary. No fairground camping is published, so the rig is based nearby.

Class B campervan on a riverside campground loop in the Smokies in October

balsam-mountain-access-road-narrow-switchback

Tuesday to Saturday

RV Rentals for the Cherokee Indian Fair in Cherokee, NC

A Tribal Event on Sovereign Land

The fair is produced by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and held on the Qualla Boundary, which has its own laws. This is not the Cherokee Nation, a separate tribe headquartered in Oklahoma, and the distinction matters. Stickball runs across the week, the parade takes the Tuesday afternoon ahead of the evening gates, and days are set aside for children, elders and veterans.

One Road Rule Decides What You Can Bring

Balsam Mountain, reached off the Parkway above Cherokee, bars motorhomes and vans over 25 feet from its access road and bars towing outright. Every unit we run is 24 feet or under, so that road stays open to this fleet and shut to most coaches. Time it carefully though, because the Balsam Mountain season ends in the middle of October and fair week falls right at the end of it.

The question we get first about fair week is whether we can put a unit on the fairgrounds, and the honest answer is that nobody publishes one either way. So our rule is that we will not quote a site we cannot confirm exists: ring the Cherokee Welcome Center on 828-359-6490, find out what overnight parking your visit actually allows, and tell us the answer. The second rule concerns the park. Nothing inside Great Smoky Mountains carries a hookup of any kind, so for Smokemont or Deep Creek we send the unit out with full fresh water and walk you through making it last the week. Book the site first, then call us.

Cherokee Indian Fair Asheville RV Renter Review

Campervan interior running self-contained at a national park campground

Five days, ten dollars

Five Days on the Boundary, and What They Ask of You

Five days on the Boundary in the first full week of October, which is also the busiest fortnight of the year in these mountains. What shapes the trip:

Admission runs ten dollars from Tuesday to Friday and twenty on the Saturday, so the whole week costs less in tickets than a single day at many events
Gates open at 5:00 pm on the Tuesday, after the parade, and the Saturday runs latest of all
Stickball is played across the week rather than staged once as an exhibition, and it is a traditional game rather than a sideshow
Cherokee sits on the edge of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where no campground anywhere carries a hookup of any kind
Fishing on the Boundary needs a tribal permit; a North Carolina licence is not valid there

Five days is a week away rather than an evening out.

Hookups or the park

Hookups in Town, or No Hookups in the Park

Off site, because nothing is published about camping at the fairgrounds for anybody. For hookups in town, the Cherokee KOA on KOA Campground Road runs full hookups on its deluxe sites with 30 and 50 amp and opens all year. Happy Holiday RV Village on Wolfetown Road is the other full hookup option and describes itself as native owned.

The national park is a different proposition entirely. Smokemont, about six miles north on US 441, stays open all year across more than 140 sites, and Deep Creek near Bryson City runs 92. Neither has a hookup, because no campground in the park does, and neither has showers. Length limits are set per site rather than per campground, so reserve the specific site. A Class B campervan is the easiest of ours to place on a park loop.

Getting there is simpler than the storm coverage suggests. The road route runs I-26 to I-40, off toward Waynesville and along US 74, about fifty five miles, and none of the well known closures touch it. The Parkway is open south of Asheville if you want the scenic version, though it is slow and its southern tunnels are low. Ring us with your dates before you commit to a Parkway route, because the clearance on those tunnels decides it rather than the map does. Book the unit and we connect it on site before the parade. Our events page covers the rest of the autumn season.