North Carolina

Now that I'm on a faster internet connection, let me fill you in on our adventures in the mountains. :)

Here are Collin and Paul in one of the hammocks by the river at the cabin. :)

I told Collin to "strike a pose" and he did. LOL! :) This was on the Graveyard trail... a lot of these pics are from that hike. :)

Ronni and me. My back feels like I did a bunch of push-ups yesterday from carrying her on my back. This is not a very flattering picture of myself but Ronni looks pretty cute! :)

Collin in a crevice. haha!

The family, yes, my eyes were closed in this pic. I'm just not very photogenic. LOL!

I just thought this was pretty and took a picture.

Of course we had to find a cache while on the trail, right?

We made it to upper falls so the kids removed their shoes and played. Well, they both ended up sitting right in the water but that was fine... we were hot and hiked a long time to get there. :)

Here's everyone having a picnic at the falls. We made this trip with the Monsons and the Haymonds. Paul, Ronni and I did not make it in this pic but we were there too! :)

Collin wanted to hike to the top of the falls so here is Collin (and some unknown man) at the falls. :) We met the others back at the trailhead. :) Paul and Ronni waited for us at the bottom though. Collin just really wanted to see the top of the falls. :)

The end of the hike.... I think Paul was tired. What do you think? The last bit of the trail were stairs and uphill climbs and he carried Ronni back through that. haha! Poor guy! :)

This is The Devil's Courthouse. Here's an explanation about it. Collin thought the legend about the giant was awesome! :)

After we went home and rested a bit we decided it was time to play in the river by the cabins (remember, we only had one full day to spend here so we were trying to fill it up).

Ronni was yelling "Cheese!!" at me. LOL! She looks angry but really she was posing for the camera.

Collin playing on some rocks.
However, the fun quickly ended. Kaden wasn't feeling well and didn't want to play in the water so Traci and Kaden decided to head back to the cabin. Tami offered to help them cross the swift moving part of the river while I watched the other three kids playing on the rocks. Unfortunately, as they were crossing the swift part a tree branch was disturbed. Well, the unfortunate part was that this particular tree branch happened to be the home of a bee's nest. I was trying to get a picture of them crossing the river and as I was looking in my camera I noticed the moms were slapping themselves in the head and swinging their heads around. Then they both started screaming and Tami ran back towards us while Traci and Kaden ran the other way. The bees had attacked. It was a bit scary. Traci was stung several times, Kaden once, and Tami once. The rest of us were okay. We had to wait for the bees to calm down and then we crossed back over somewhere else. Here is a pic of the unfriendly bees' nest.

That was the end of that day. This morning we had to be out of their by 10am so we didn't do much but we did decide to drive the scenic Blue Ridge Parkway. It was beautiful and I was able to see WHY the Smokey Mountains are really called The Smokey Mountains.

Aren't the mountains beautiful? I think that Paul may need to find a job in the mountains if nothing here works out. :) We ALL absolutely LOVED the mountains. :)