Day 28

I was trying to sleep in this morning. We didn't have too many plans for the day and our drive was only 30 minutes so I thought it would be find. Until I started to hear thunder in the distance. We have had to pack up in pouring rain on a couple of occasions and it's definitely the worst so I hopped out of the tent to get things going. Within about 15 minutes we were zipping the last zipper and making a quick breakfast. I kept an eye on the storm the whole time and it seemed to be taking a nice little detour around us. We ate and chatted with our friends for a little while before saying our goodbyes and heading on our way.

The girls have evbeen leaving rocks at all of our campsites for someone to find. We left my stick man "Jimmy" hanging by the table too thinking someone might find it amusing.

We stopped at the Table Rock overlook to show the kids the mountain they'd hiked up the day before. I got the distracted "Wow" from all of them so I took a picture for myself anyway.

We got to our next site pretty early as everyone was packing their sites up. We had our pick of the spots Emily wanted so we were able to set up  pretty quickly and let the kids play awhile. We walked around the campground after lunch exploring the closed sections. They looked like they'd been abandoned for a few years with overgrown everything and no signs of people activity.

I started getting restless so we decided to drive down to Mt Mitchell - the tallest mountain east of the Mississippi. Just like Grandfather Mountain the temperature and weather changed drastically once we got to the top. We took a few minutes to enjoy the museum and gift shop then made the short trek to the observation deck. Not that we could see anything!!

Brayden was the camera guy today so he amused himself taking a few pictures before we headed back down to the car. Unfortunately we could see Big or Little Butt today!

I'm not sure if it was the thinner air up there or my kids are crazy but they asked to see if there was ice cream in the little cafe. I'm thinking hot chocolate might have been more appropriate but we just headed back down the mountain toward our campsite.

We both needed ice for our coolers - almost a daily run with the sunny spots we'd been parked in - so we drove a few miles past our campground to Little Switzerland's General Store. I'd imagined a place with lots of different shops and restaurants surrounding a Swiss-looking inn.

What we found was a restaurant, general store, and book/coffee shop. It took us about 5 minutes to walk through the stores so I was glad we hadn't made a special trip to spend some time there. We did find the speed-readers a couple books to tide them over until Dave brought some more reading material.

When we got back I edited pictures for a little while and the kids played games and read. Laney and Brayden were reading their new books and were halfway finished with them before I made them stop. I am amazed at how fast they can devour books!

Our afternoon storm showed up so Ryan and Evey popped into her tent while the other kids and I retired to ours. Brayden and Laney just wanted to read which was perfectly fine with me!

It was time for dinner after the rain so the kids played while Laney and I cooked. All the kids were chatting non stop about our plans for the next day. We had scheduled horseback riding for the next morning and hopefully it wouldn't be canceled this time! We would need to get on the road early in the morning so we went to bed a little early too after a few chapters of our book. It's getting to the good parts where the kids keep begging for one more chapter!

Day 18

We decided to rotate the tent yesterday in hopes we would all sleep better. I would venture to say it would have been better had it not been raining most of the night. We were all trying to keep away from the sides of the tent so they didn't buldge out and invite rain into the tent. Once it stopped we were all in a clump just trying to eek out a little more sleep before the sun.

Once we were all relatively clean and fed we decided to go to the visitor's center and a short trail nearby. We'd heard there was a movie about the building of the parkway so that was first on our agenda. We've seen tons of movies at visitor's centers so we were thinking it would be like those but it was a full-length documentary of the project. We watched until the big political twist and headed to the tiny gift shop.

After getting some hiking advice for the next day we walked to Wild Cat Rocks Overlook for a peek at the view.  On our way we passed by the lodge and a restaurant that were closed. We'd heard with the troubles passing the budget there were many things that were closed and short-staffed. Apparently there was also a concessionaire that pulled out of the parkway business a few years ago that causes many building to be closed. We are definitely not used to this on our trips to bigger parks!

I forgot my camera in the car so just trust me that it was another beautiful view of those blue mountains!  We spotted the roof of the cabin we were looking for down at the base of the mountain. This cabin is the last remaining building in it's original location after a landslide the demolished the community in the 30s. We continue to learn about how tough the lives were of the people who lived in these mountains 75 years ago.

With a beautiful afternoon ahead of us we decided to venture off the parkway to Stone Mountain State Park. These curvy mountain roads make slow going so I forget it takes quite a while longer to travel 10 or 15 miles than 10 or 15 minutes! The kids spotted a country store with ice cream so of course we had to stop. The selection was better than the last few places we'd been but we still haven't found our amazing spot yet.

Once we were at the park, Evey was excited to walk up to the top and two of mine were excited about going to see the waterfalls. We opted to see the mountain first but found out at the trail head it would be a 8.5 mile strenuous walk. Evey was immediately out! We ended up walking the trail to a spot where we could view the mountain and the homestead of a family that lived there.































Evey is absolutely the expert at finding tiny wildlife. This day she found a salamander on the trail that we hadn't seen yet. He was very jumpy but she managed to hold him for a picture or two. I've never seen salamanders so small!

Once we were back off the trail to the parking lot the kids were wiped out. While Evey made a phone call - on an actual pay phone! - to her dad Ryan found a beautiful, huge painted rock and decided to keep it (for now says me). We grabbed some ice and headed back to the campsite for the night.

It was cool enough for a fire again this night so after dinner Emily and I relaxed by the fire while the kids played and read. Evey broke out the popcorn after awhile and we had fun trying to make it with the kids without burning it. The first batch received some punctures that it couldn't recover from so Emily tossed it in the fire and the adults handled the second one. After what seemed like 95 minutes, we had popcorn and the kids were thrilled.

Once it was dark enough we put out the fire and headed to the meadow for flashlight tag. There weren't more than about 10 places to hide so once those were exhausted a few times we switched to flashlight freeze tag for awhile. There were a few motorcycle guys staying in our loop so after 10 minutes or so of that we retired so we wouldn't bug them too much. Our kids our loud! Hoping the sleeping situation would be better this night, we slipped into our sleeping bags and were all asleep within a couple minutes.

Day 4

We woke up today expecting to quickly pack up and avoid the morning showers, but when I checked my phone as I woke up there was nothing. We were able to take our time packing up instead of shoving things all over the place which can seriously drive me crazy. It's hard enough for all of us to fit in my car much less with piles of stuff out of their places!

Once we ate breakfast we packed up and headed to the trail for Natural Falls, the namesake of this park. We tried to convince the kids it was a five mile one-way walk down to the falls but they just happened to be standing near enough at check in the day before to hear the ranger tell us it was only 47 steps down. Laney was super excited to learn this waterfall was featured in the movie "Where the Red Fern Grows" which she read last year.

We walked all around the trail surrounding the falls to learn more about the plants and animals in the area as well as to see the waterfall from different angles. Grammie even spotted a chipmunk who wasn't scared of us at all as he ate his mid-morning snack. Grammie must have been smelling really good this morning because a moth tried to adopt her on the way to our cars. No matter how many times we touched him to encourage him to leave he would simply fly around to the other shoulder. She ended up having to climb in next to the rose bushes to entice him to leave!

We got on the road and headed to our next stop in Oklahoma City. While we have just completed learning about modern history, it didn't cover as far up as the 1990s so Dave and I had the task of explaining the Oklahoma City Bombing to the kids in our car. I remember feeling so shocked and sad, but so much time has passed that there were so many details I didn't remember.

We had our first experience exploring a bigger city with Grammie in her RV! Of course, Grammie scored the front row parking spot as she always does. Once she had Lola secured in the RV with the air on, we went to explore the memorial.  We were welcomed to the memorial with the words, "We come here to remember those who were killed, those who survived and those changed forever.  May all who leave here know the impact of violence. May this memorial offer comfort, strength, peace, hope, and serenity."

The first area we got to was the wall where people could leave things. The kids were very anxious, trying to figure out something they could also leave. They saw a few pictures of the children that were killed in the bombing too.

Next we walked through into the memorial plaza and were instantly
in awe of the concept of the memorial. We spent a few minutes talking to the park ranger about the meaning behind many of the objects in the area. There were the enormous walls with a reflecting pool between them. Each had a times carved into it: 9:01 for the last minute of innocence then 9:03 for the first minute of healing.

There were 168 chairs with names strategically placed on what floor and area of the building the victims worked or were visiting at the time of the bombing. There were some of the original walls still in place with names of the survivors from  buildings in the immediate area.

The part of the memorial I liked most was the Survivor Tree. This tree was surrounded by burning cars after the bombing and still survives today. It would imagine is a symbol of hope and strength for so many people. And it's absolutely beautiful!

The view from the tree over the plaza was breathtaking.

After walking around a little bit more we decided to go by the children's area. For months after the bombing Oklahoma City received tiles from children from all over the country and they are part of the display. The kids also added their marks on the chalkboard tiles on the ground.


On the way out the kids had the idea to leave a few Pensacola Rocks for the children that were taken that day.

A few hours later we drove into our spot in Little Sahara State Park. It was blazing hot and we were all starving so we set up in record time to eat. Of course we'd heard there was rain coming so we prepared by making sure the rain fly was secure. After dinner Brayden decided to read so the girls played My Ship Sails with me and Dave. We hadn't played since our summer trip 3 years ago. After a raucous game we decided to head to bed. I brought it my laptop and things to work on should the storm keep me up.