Road Trip Day 6 - Walnut Street Bridge and Ruby Falls

This little stinker did a really good job camping, but every morning he thought it was time to wake up and play at around 6:45am. He was so cute and happy we couldn't be mad!

On Thursday we packed up our camp and headed off to Chattanooga, Tennessee. After we arrived at our hotel we went to the Walnut Street walking bridge, which is just under a 1/2 mile long, and goes across the Tennessee River. It claims to be the longest 'pedestrian-only' bridge in the world. Who knows if that is true, but the kids love bridges, so it was fun.

In the background of this picture you can see a "crane boat". There were two of these out by the auto-bridge, and Skyler thought they were just about the coolest thing ever.

Here's Andy pondering life. What will he do when he is finally done with school in 7 months....

On the other side of the bridge is a place called Coolidge Park, where they have a 123-year-old carousel that has been restored, and you can ride it for $1. The kids loved that there were different kinds of animals. Ally rode on "the girl horsey. It has flowers, mom." Skyler rode on the pig, and Kylee rode on another horse. Andy was boring with Colby and just sat on a bench that did not go up and down.

About 1/2 way through the ride a fly landed on Ally for a second, and she freaked out and almost fell off her horse (there were no safety harnesses), which almost gave me a heart attack. Luckily she got her balance and did okay for the rest of the ride.

After the bridge we went to Ruby Falls. It's a 145 foot waterfall that is 1100 feet underground in a cave. The story of how it was discovered is pretty cool, and the kids LOVED the cave. Skyler thought it was sort of creepy at first, and he insisted on holding my hand the whole way in, but by the time we were on our way out he had discovered he loved it and refused to let anyone hold his hand because "I can do it all by myself, mom." He asked sooooooo many questions about everything. An older couple from Pennsylvania was walking right behind us, and they kept laughing at him. Then the man told him: "Boy. You make me tired!"

It was past Colby's bed time, so he was pretty grumpy, and then he fell asleep.

When you get to the waterfall it is completely dark at first. We told the kids "Okay, we're here! Can you see the waterfall?" Kylee knew we were teasing, but Skyler was so disappointed. He was like "Mom, I don't see it! I can hear it, but where is it?!" Then the lights came on, and he just stared at it and said "Woooowwwwww." They told us a story about how the waterfall used to be at the very front of the cave, but over the course of millions of years it has worn it away and moved further and further back. That boggled Skyler's mind. He keeps asking me to explain to him how it happened. Then he gets details confused and Kylee tries to set him straight and he has to have me explain it all over again.

Ignore the look of complete boredom on Ally's face. She loved the cave. They told us they have another section of the cave that they use as a haunted cave tour around Halloween, and she was convinced that it is most likely haunted by Pete and Count Mickula (she's watched Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Monster Musical a few too many times...).

Road Trip Day 5 - Cade's Cove and Elkmont

On Wednesday morning Skyler and Ally slept in a bit because they were finally exhausted.

Colby and Ally were awake, so we let Kylee play with Colby for a little bit while Andy and I got some extra sleep, too!

That day we drove out to Cade's Cove. We'd been saying how it was so amazing that the park was so green, but we hadn't seen any mountain meadows like you see out west. There aren't many pine trees, either. The Smoky Mountains are mostly sycamores, maples, and oaks, and then the ground is all covered in grass, ivy, and other plants. It's the greenest place I've ever seen. Anyway, when we drove out to Cade's Cove we finally saw the meadows we'd been looking for!

Back in the late 1800s up to the 1930s (or so), there was a town out in Cade's Cove. Apparently at one point it got up to 700 people. This is one of the old churches out there. They all had cemeteries outside of them, and there were tombstones that were fairly recent. It appears that some of the Cade's Cove families bought family plots and even though it's a National Park now, those family members are still allowed to be buried there.

While we were driving around the loop we say Bambi (above) and his mom (below).

This old mill out in Cade's Cove is still operational. The granite millstones are the originals from...I want to say like 1886? When we were there it was making cornmeal. It was really cool to go inside and see how it all worked. It said that for every turn of the water wheel (for which they built a wooden trough to divert water from the river), the millstone goes around 25 times. However, it only dropped like 4-5 kernels of dried corn in from the bucket even 10 seconds or so...so we feel like it would take FOREVER to make a whole bag full!

We say this little brown toad on the trail right after some guy chased away a Copperhead snake (which we did not see because we walked up a few seconds too late).

Skyler asked us what these were, and then said "It looks like that wagon was in like...a car wreck. Or like a wagon-wreck. It's RUINED!"

They still have some of the old homes and buildings out there as well. It was interesting to see how much fancier these ones were than the one we saw the day before that housed the family of 11. They were all from the same time period - so these people must have been more wealthy.

After Cade's Cove Colby needed to take a nap, so I took him into the tent and Andy took the other kids down to the river in our campground to throw rocks. He kept them busy down there for over an hour!

After Colby woke up we decided to drive up to the end of our campground road and see what was up there, because my map showed a little blue box that meant there was a "historcial structure(s)" but it wasn't labeled, nor were there any signs indicating what it might be. When we got up there, we found that there was pretty much an entire ghost-resort-community.

Apparently in the 1920s "Elkmont" was a resort community town. Down where our campground was there was a sawmill, and the train came through. Wealthy people built these homes (they even had indoor plumbing and electricity) and came up here for vacation. When the National Park was established they bought all the properties, but some of the families got lifetime lease rights, the last of which just ended in like 2004? or 2009? I don't remember. Anyway, but all the buildings are abandoned now, and they look super decrepit. We were able to go inside one, but most are marked as "no trespassing" because they're too dangerous. Apparently there are plans to fix some of them up, and when we were there you could see that they had started some work.

Here are the kids sitting on the rocking chairs on the deck of the old clubhouse.

And they also had their own cemetery, which again had some fairly recent graves along with the super old ones. It was really cool to see, but kind of eerie. It was almost like you could imagine the bustling place it used to be, with fancy people with their gowns and parasols and suits and top hats.

Road Trip Day 4 - Laurel Falls

On Tuesday morning we decided to go for a hike up to Laurel Falls. It said it was only 1.3 miles each way, and they claimed it was paved the whole way. We thought that meant it would be fairly easy, so I stuck Colby in the front carrier and off we went. Yeah, no. It was uphill the WHOLE way. As we went up, and up, and up...and up some more, Skyler kept telling me "Mom, I think we're going to climb all the way up to the top of this mountain! I can't even hear the cars anymore!" And he was right. We went way high up this mountain. I'm not sure what's up with his face in the photo above...

We made Ally walk the entire way, and she actually did great. We figured out that if I held her hand and Skyler and Andy walked either way in front of us or way behind, she did a lot less whining because it was pretty clear that I could not pick her up since I was already carrying Colby. If Andy walked near us she whined a lot about being tired, thinking he would carry her. For the last half mile or so, she sang a song to Colby about hiking. It was a really high-pitched song whose tune I couldn't quite distinguish, but it was all about how a baby loves to hike on this mountain and he's going to see a waterfall. All the people passing us (which was everyone because we were slow) kept commenting about her beautiful singing.

After Laurel Falls we had a picnic for lunch, and then we decided to drive around the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail because the kids (and Andy) weren't feeling up to another hike just yet. The photo below is super blurry, but is a black bear that was wandering on the side of the road with her baby.

Along the road there were these old mountain farms that you could stop to look at. This one had a family of ELEVEN that lived in it until the 1930s. The one room on the right is their living space, and the one room on the left is their kitchen that they added on at some point after the original room was built. We had a nice chat with the kids about how it would be to live with that many people in this one room - especially in the winter. Yikes. This room was about the size of our 8 man tent that barely fits the 6 of us. I really wonder where they all slept.

However, they did have this nice river running right in front of their house, and it had a little area that looked like a perfect swimming (or bath?) hole. We imagined that in the summer they probably spent a lot of time out there.

Andy sat on this log with Colby while the other kids were dipping their hands in the river...

...so then of course they all wanted to sit on the log, too.

After we finished the motor nature trail we passed this sign and I made Andy stop so we could take a picture to prove we went here. I balanced my camera on a wooden post and set the timer so I could jump in. It didn't do too bad!

That afternoon before we headed back to camp we went on this little trail to Cataract Falls. It was only about a mile, and was very flat and easy, which Ally loved. Overall we hiked about 3.6 miles this day, which made a total of about 7 miles in two days. We decided that was quite a bit for Skyler, and Ally hiked about 6 miles of it herself as well. I was really surprised that Skyler didn't whine at all, and Kylee has always been a decent hiker, so that was nice.