I've recently heard it said that the best days end with the dirtiest clothes. By that measure (or any other), we had a GREAT time on our mini-vacation to the Cherokee, NC side of the Smoky Mountain National Park.
We stayed on a little camping cabin right on the river. It wasn't exactly roughing it - air conditioning, heat, full bath, fridge, stove, microwave, even a "master" bedroom with a pretty comfy queen size bed - definitely nicer than we expected.
There was a sleeping loft with 3 mattresses, and a futon downstairs. Roomy enough even for our crew!
And... there was even cable TV. Although we really didn't spend much time watching it, of course. The weather was BEAUTIFUL and there's so much to do on that side of the mountain!
Mostly, there was fishing. Lots and lots of fishing. I don't have a lot of pictures of that, because fishing is for the bigger (quieter) boys. They went all up and down the river trying different spots while Elliott, Cade and I stayed at the cabin. But I did snap a few of them when they were right out behind the cabin.
Elliott just loved running around on the bank - barefoot. Naturally.
Her feet looked like this nearly every minute of our trip.
Her feet looked like this nearly every minute of our trip.
Every night we made a campfire and (duh!) had s'mores.
We did some hiking.
You can't see it in the picture, but twice on our hike we encountered literally hundreds of baby butterflies. Elliott and Wyatt were trying to "catch" some.
Kellen carried Cade for a bit...
...but Cade wouldn't stop pulling his hair!! Stinker.
So he ended up back on Daddy's back, and Kellen was stuck with the supply pack. We also got to check out a couple historic buildings. This grist mill was built in the 1880's and still functions.
I bought a sack of flour and a sack of cornmeal, each ground on this water-powered stone. Can't wait to make some bread and corn muffins from it!
We also walked around an old farmstead. We LOVED seeing all the old buildings that made up the homestead. They had a building for literally everything. Here is the main house.
The meat house.
The, well, you know.
I was surprised to see there was an entire apple house - and it was really big! Apples were an important part of their lives.
The apple house.
There was also a spring house, where gravity was used to run cold creek water over perishables, like crocks of milk and butter, to "refrigerate" them. So clever! There were several large corn cribs, a root cellar, a pig pen, chicken house, an unmarked building of some sort that we sort of figured served as a moonshine still. I don't have pictures of all of it, but they were pretty similar in structure to the apple house.
The barn was huge and so well made.
There were dozens of pieces of the original farm equipment. I think I was born in the wrong time - being here made me so wish I had a homestead like this one!
We cooked at the cabin, partly on the stove top, partly on the fire, and partly on the grill. My little darlin' helped mama shuck corn...
Kellen found a lot of time for quiet river-side reading.
We also got to see some wildlife. A park ranger told us about a spot where we would be likely to see elk at dusk, and he was right! We saw four - one bull and three cows.
And we even saw a strutting tom turkey when we were on our way back to the cabin.
He must have been doing something right - he convinced a couple lady turkeys to follow him across the street.
We thoroughly enjoyed our quiet little getaway, and we will definitely be going back again!
