Saturday, October 31, 2015

happy halloween!

Squirtle, Charizard, and Pikachu are looking forward to trick-or-treating even on this dreary wet day. Good thing Mike is home to take them!


Sunday, October 25, 2015

one last hike



Clever clogs that we are, we thought that getting in one last hike Sunday morning before hitting the road would be a great idea. The boys would have a chance to run off a little energy, and we would get to see Grotto Falls, the only waterfall in the park that you can actually go behind. Neat, right? It was described to us as an "easy one-mile hike," which seemed perfect for our purposes. So we packed everything up and got to the trailhead around 8, only to find that it was a mile and a half each way, which really wouldn't make that much difference, except that it was very steep. And rocky. And filled with millions of exposed tree roots. In my book, it was WAY harder than Clingmans Dome: just as steep, but without the lovely paved trail and benches along the way. Still, we soldiered on and eventually made our way to the falls, which really were beautiful. And we did go behind them. It took more than three hours to do the round trip, though, so by the time we got back to the van, we were all tired and starving, and frankly pretty rank. Apologies to Megan and the girls, since our next stop was to have a quick lunch with them before jumping in our locker room on wheels and stewing for eight hours on the ride home. Whee!

But you're really here for the pictures, right?

 








Saturday, October 24, 2015

noodle time



I had such big plans when we came here. Finally, a lot of us would be in one place, with no other pressing obligations. What better time to teach some people how to make Gram's noodles? So I packed the stand mixer, and the rolling pin, and the noodle rack, and the noodle cutter ... and the universe laughed at me. Because of course it was right when we were getting ready to start making noodles that we realized that Dollywood closed in three hours, so if a group was going to go, they had to get going. And of course it turned out that another group was still out hiking up the side of a mountain, and another group was still out hiking up the side of a completely different mountain. Of course.

But we still had to eat, and we had all the ingredients, so I set to work making noodles. And then I realized that the crank for the noodle cutter was missing, presumed back in Indiana. Whooooops. Luckily, Laura found a screwdriver in her car and MacGuyvered that sucker right up. So those of us who weren't out having a blast at Dollywood (Liam rode ALL the roller coasters several times and couldn't stop talking about it, and Henry had a great time doing some kind of lumberjack lift ride with his Great-Uncle Kent) or communing with nature banded together for some turbo noodle assembly. Elly was my assistant, and she helped me mix up, roll out, and prepare the dough, which we then passed off to Mike, Laura, and Brady for cutting and hanging. (The screwdriver crank method, while effective, was kind of hard on the hands so they had to switch off.) And in less than an hour, we had noodles! Amazing how something that takes me a full afternoon at home only took minutes when I had people working with me to help.



And just as we got the chicken cooked and the noodles in the broth, all the groups came filing in. My brother made mashed potatoes, and Bethany made some chicken breasts and stuffed mushrooms appetizers. I think there were plans for a salad, but you know how that goes. Max shuffled in, exhausted from his hike, but then heard how much fun we had at the aquarium that morning and was very jealous. Luckily, Dylan and Cole also really wanted to go, so the three of them used up our remaining passes after dinner and had a blast.

So in the end, nobody learned how to make noodles, but everybody got to eat them, so I suppose it all worked out. I'm still planning a noodle clinic at my house sometime soon, though!

P.S. Check out Henry and Kent having fun at Dollywood!




something fishy here



My sister-in-law Megan lives in Gatlinburg, and she has been a wonderful resource for us this trip. She helped us find our cabin (Mike keeps calling it a mansion, and he's not far off), and somehow she managed to wrangle free passes for us to Dollywood and Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies. So this morning, Laura, Emyle (Laura's sister-in-law), Henry, Gracie, Elly, and I went off to see some fish. We've all been to the Shedd Aquarium a bunch of times, so we were feeling pretty confident that it might be nice but wouldn't really compare. Ha! I was so impressed. There were so many hands-on things for the kids to do, and the whole downstairs was basically a moving sidewalk that ran right through the middle of a giant aquarium, so there were sharks swimming all around us. The best part for me was that there were minimal external lights, so no irritating reflections every time I tried to take a picture (this is a problem I run into every time we go to the Shedd). Too bad I only had my phone with me instead of the big camera, which was with Mike. Still, I think I ended up with some pretty great pictures to remember the place by.













Friday, October 23, 2015

elkmont ghost town



Tonight, most of our group went to downtown Gatlinburg, where they took a VIP tour of Sugarlands Distilling Co., complete with shots of moonshine and gift bags, all arranged through my grandpa's liquor store. The tweens, teens, and older kids all went too, and explored the shops downtown while the adults were occupied. Then they all went to the Mysterious Mansion haunted house. Since Mike was more interested in moonshine than I was, I volunteered to stay behind with the littler kids (Max, Henry, Gracie, and Elly) and have our own little adventure. Matt and Katie and J and his girlfriend, Carleen, opted to accompany us, and off we went in search of the abandoned town of Elkmont. Elkmont was a logging town until the 1930s, when Great Smoky Mountains National Park was established. The national park is made up of a lot of public lands in Tennessee and North Carolina, but to join them all together, the states had to buy up a bunch of property from individuals too, which is where Elkmont comes in. Most of the property owners got lifetime leases from the government when their land was purchased, so there were still some people living here as late as the 1990s, which I find fascinating. What must it have been like to be the last leaseholder living here, with tourists and hikers all around, checking out the dilapidated buildings that used to belong to your neighbors? I can only imagine that it was a tough thing to bear witness to.

Like a lot of things around here, Elkmont isn't really advertised much, and there was little signage, so we had to stop more than once to ask for directions, but eventually we found it and started exploring. Most of the buildings have signs outside saying you can't enter (because they are old and falling down), but that didn't stop us from peering in windows and doorways to get a glimpse of hearths and other features. We stuck to one main street and explored up one side and down the other until the sun went down, then we made our way back to the cabin for dinner.












clingmans dome



We woke up bright-eyed this morning in Gatlinburg and decided to take a hike to the top of Clingmans Dome. Well, most of us did, anyway. Henry and Max were tired and didn't feel like going, so they stayed behind and played video games and enjoyed the hot tub at the (really, really awesome gigantic) cabin. But Mike, Liam, and I went, along with Kent, Popi, Maria, Matt, Katie, Kelsey, Jimmy, and Janis. The path was pretty steep, and the elevation was high, so it was kind of hard going, but the path was also paved and there were benches all along the way that Kent and I took full advantage of. (We were the stragglers, which was just fine with us.) Clingmans Dome is the highest point in Tennessee (6,643 feet), and once you get to the top, they torture you just a little bit more by making you climb a ramp up to the observation tower. But the views from the top, as expected, were incredible. We went first thing in the morning, and it was a good thing, too. When we got there, we had no trouble finding a parking space, but by the time we came back down, there was a huge line of people waiting for spaces. It was kind of a zoo.








 

On the way back, we stopped at a random little stream and did some exploring, and in some ways, I liked this part better. Because it wasn't a marked area or anything, we had that sense of discovering something for ourselves.








After that little break, we got stuck in a traffic jam because there was a bear on the side of the road! Very exciting. I gave Kent my camera and he got a few shots as the park ranger waved us on by (the traffic jam was caused by people stopping to take pictures, so they were trying to get everything moving again).