Thanksgiving Walk 2007

The lineup Thanksgiving 2007

That's the best we could do with some characters missing.

We hiked around the lake ..

It was a nice warm fall day, so we drove to Big Ridge and walked around the lake. We were the only people on the trail, but we had lots of memories with us. Garvey used to love that trail. When he was a puppy, Paul carried him around the trail. Later when he was on his own, he ran ahead of us and came around a curve where a woman was sitting on a rock. He jumped in her lap!! Fortunately she liked dogs. We took Andy on the trail with us when we were dog sitting. He loved it.
When the children were little, we camped at Big Ridge so that they could take swimming lessons in the cold lake. We camped in a tent and I cooked our meals over the fire in a big iron skillet. We would walk down to the swimming pool to get an ice cream sandwich.
We rode around the lake on horses once. I was on the lead horse with the children behind . JMB stayed on the dam to take our picture...
We stayed in two cabins for one of our family vacations. The ranger had to come quiet us down one night because we were doing the electric slide to loud music.
It's a three mile hike around, and we're glad that we can still walk it...

Big Ridge State Park

Fall 2007

Trip to the Mountains

It was cold , but the leaves were still on the trees in our neighborhood, so we decided to go check out the mountain leaves. We went to Elkmont by way of our secret route down Chapman Highway...White School Rd. ..River Divide...New Era West Rd.... Goose Creek...Walden Creek...Wears Valley Road....Metcalf Bottoms..
The leaves were beautiful up to Elkmont...red oaks covered the mountain side all the way to the top...We drove through patches of all yellow beech leaves, and then we'd pass orange and red maples and black gums and hickories to name a few.
The leaves were gone up the Elkmont road where we hiked; there was snow on the ground and it felt like a winter hike. We walked two miles and then came back to walk through Elkmont campground to get a drink of the good mountain water and to eat our peanut butter sandwiches and apples at a picnic table. People were camping on the first loop...there were motor homes and tents.
We drove back to Cades Cove Loop Road and saw some magnificent views of the orange and red and yellow covered mountains. It was a clear day . The mountains looked like the view you get from the top of Leconte...just beautiful We had to stop to let a deer run across the road in front of us.
The drive back to Townsend was beautiful with yellow leaves hanging over the road. There is still water in Little River, but it was down. We stopped at the visitor center in Townsend . They are showing a display of mountain paintings....
When we got home, our beautiful trees were waiting for us. Oh it was a nice fall day!!
May you have one like it ....

Fountain City

Beautiful Fountain City Park

We walked down to the park today. The walk back was tough but we made it. There was a bazaar going on at the Methodist Church so we looked but didn't buy. We talked to some square dance friends and some pool friends. We came home to sit in the sun and read our books on the front porch. We listened to the UT game while we watched another one on TV. I knitted another triangular scarf. This one is red. We had crockpot split pea soup and cornbread for supper. Just another day in Paradise.