Katie, our oldest granddaughter, came to visit us for a couple of days. I had these grandiose ideas of taking her to Cherokee (which I did), and educating her in the uniqueness and oldness of the mountains. Well, we went to Oconoluftee Indian Village where we got a tour guide who had NO idea of what he was speaking...full Cherokee though he was. Consequently, we spent most of our time hanging out at the rear of the pack, laughing! We did learn a couple of dances that we intend to teach the family at Thanksgiving. Though the village was interesting in many details, it was hot and humid. Following that we went to the Museum of the Cherokee, which was very interesting if the exhibits that were supposed to be narrated with a motion detector had worked. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out what particular portions of the exhibits were about...another BUST!
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| Katie at Cherokee |
After leaving the museum, while waiting for "Unto These Hills" to start, we decided that we were hungry. Bad mistake. We found one place that had food, so we got the world's worst hotdog. I mean, really, no slaw, no onion, just chili and mustard. After that we went back to the car to cool off. While there we talked about the review of the play...mixed. We were tired, and finally decided to blow it off and come home! There we watched "The Green Hornet", a lame and stupid movie that was, nonetheless, funny.
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| Katie behind the waterfall! |
The next day JR and I decided to take her "waterfalling"...an interesting pastime in the mountains that consists of driving all over hell and half of Georgia to see water falling over rocks. We first went to Silver Run...a totally underwhelming fall which neither JR nor I had ever seen. Then we went to Whitewater which is a spectacular fall that is one of the most revered in the eastern US. Then we went to the new Gorges State Park where there are trail heads to three other spectacular falls on the Horsepasture River. However, the roads leading to them were closed for some undisclosed reason. We finally just gave up and took her to some property that we own in northern Jackson that had waterfalls and creeks. There she played in the falls, and searched for garnet and quartz in the creek. We all had a good time...best of the visit.
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| Queen Lauren |
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| Patti, Jim and Jonathan |
Jon and Patti brought Katie up. and of course, the other children were here. We cooked out and then made S'mores over the fire. Too cute!!!
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| Katie enjoying the fruits! |
And then, I spent a day with Habitat for Humanity, doing a Women Build project. It was fun, but I think I've aged out of hard labor!
There were seven or eight people in our crew and our jobs were to build walls and put in windows. I actually started out on the roof crew, but found that I didn't have the strength to be a good worker there. So, I changed to the window crew. Most of the time, I read the levels, but I was instrumental in putting a window. Wow! It was fun, I met new people, and felt that I had made a contribution to society in some way. Below are pics of the whole crew and of the "window crew".
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| The Window cCew |
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| The Whole Crew |
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Next up.. a birthday party for Jarleth and Lynn in the mountains! All of J.J.'s family will be here...such fun!
We love you guys!
