Camp Woodlands

To give you a glimpse of the fun we have planned for this week while Wesley is at camp, here's my Facebook post from Saturday:

Hey all you people on exotic vacations, soaking up these glorious final days of summer: Be jealous. We drove straight through from Tennessee to Florida yesterday with no stops except for gas. Pulled in just in time to put the kids to bed and stay up until 1:00 a.m. doing laundry, so that Michael could deliver Wesley to church at 4:45 a.m. to leave for (another) camp. And what kind of fun do we have planned this week, you ask?? Thanks for asking, we do not disappoint...

We kick off our week of thrills by hosting two truckfulls of men to tear out our entire upstairs AC system. They get to bask in the luxury of our Florida-in-July attic for the next three days as they install all new duct work and cut additional gaping holes in our ceiling while I pray a stray wire doesn’t burn down our 120-year-old house. But the fun won’t stop there! We all get to camp out sleeping downstairs together until we have AC upstairs again. Tomorrow Anna Kate gets braces followed by allergy shots just for kicks. Wednesday Tate has an appointment with the ENT, but WAIT... There’s more! 

Thursday Anna Kate is going under the knife for a tonsil & adenoids removal adventure, complete with the giggle of completely shooting my nerves as we see how she responds to anesthesia for the first time. For most people that would be enough for one week, but we Rogerses go ALL OUT. So Friday, I’m going to take my light & joy baby boy (who happens to be going through a phase where he is terrified of everything) to the allergist for allergy testing so they can stab him again and again and again all over his back with substances that we are fairly certain make him miserable. So salivate away at my enticing social media posts. Try not to be too jealous. Hashtag blessed I win.

Camp Connie 2019

We stopped to visit Papaw on the way to Connie's.  We didn't tell him we were coming, but we didn't have to go far to find him.  He was sitting outside with a friend.   The other man was very friendly and talkative.  I was absolutely fascinated by our conversation.  He served in WWII, and he talked about liberating France.  He said that if a woman was caught being sympathetic to the Nazis, the local people would shave her head as a sign of disgrace.  He said there were bald women running all over town.  I googled it when I got to the car, and sure enough, I found articles talking about local French communities shaving the heads of their female citizens who had collaborated with the Nazis.  He also told a story of hiding in a shop while someone was dragged out and hanged.  He said he's never been back to France.  He's nearly 100 years old, and it's really hitting hard that in just a decade, there will be no more first-hand witnesses to battle in WWII.  There will be a day that my grandchildren will be as fascinated by my accounts of talking to WWII vets as I was of my great grandmother's accounts (via my grandmother) of talking to Civil War vets.  I wanted to get his picture, but Tate had to go potty and when I came back, the gentleman was gone.  What a life.  I know he's like thousands of others, but it's just crazy that these boys never left home, then went off to war halfway across the world, and then came home and resumed life and never traveled again.  He said it definitely took its toll.  Heroes of our generation for sure.  He talked about spending summers on his grandfather's farm in North Carolina.  He said his grandfather had a slave that chose to stay and continue to work the farm after emancipation.  He remembers this man well.  He said the man ate at the same table with the family, but not with them.  He sat at the other end.  So sad and truly jolting that I can have a personal conversation with a man that remembers eating at the same table with a former slave.  Dismissing Papaw's Trump hat, we've come a long way. 

We could not WAIT to get our hands back on Laken.  Oh that yummy boy!  We got to see Becca too (totally second rate now - ha!) and we all went to eat at a Mexican restaurant.

This morning Connie took us hiking through Laurel Snow State Natural Area.  This hike was a history-loving girl’s dream!

We had no idea there was anything man-made along this trail at all when we set off for a hike, but soon found an old cave carved into the rock face, remnants of bridges, iron pipelines underneath the trail for over a mile, giant stone laid walls, and finally some evidence of track.  We went off trail just after the cave and climbed down to the river and climbed rocks along the riverbed for a good portion, so we didn’t see the old rails until we returned on the main trail.  We had no idea what it was, but assumed it was a mining operation of some sort. Clearly a huge amount of labor went into creating it. I started googling as soon as we got back into cell phone range!  

What a fascinating history!  This area used to be a bustling mining area.  The cave we went into was the old entrance to the Richland Mine.  The Dixon Slope Mine entrance was just around the corner, but we didn't know to look for it.  Unfortunately, large scale deadly disasters were not uncommon.  21 men died in a blast underground at the Richland Mine in December 1901.  Another 21 men were killed the following March at the nearby Nelson Mine.  Iron prices plummeted in the early 20th century, and by 1925 the mining operations were in bankruptcy.  Quoting from an article I found, "New investors resumed production, but by 1925 the iron industry in Dayton was coming to an end. The Scopes Monkey Trial, a publicity stunt devised by the mining company, put the town on the front page of papers across America for a time, but it wasn’t enough to keep the industry alive."  I never knew the entire Scopes Monkey Trial was a hoax!  It was all a publicity stunt orchestrated by this mining community.  Amazing!  I love history!!  This whole area has been reclaimed by nature - It's hard to believe there was once anything here at all.  I can't wait to come back and hike this trail again! 

Today is the 50th anniversary of man landing on the moon, and we realized that Carigan is wearing her outer space leggings and Tate is wearing a NASA shirt. See, even my subconscious is sentimental! We stayed up late watching coverage of the anniversary.  Perfect day at Camp Connie!

Gatlinburg in my DOWNtown Shoes

Erin couldn't swing a whole week in a cabin, so Dad treated us to several nights at the water park hotel, and then booked a couple rooms in the heart of downtown Gatlinburg for two nights so he could take the kids after Erin and crew headed back to Nashville.  Since Grandma and Granddaddy were keeping Erin's little ones, we decided to let them keep our kids too, and we booked a room in the hotel next door.  Gotta sneak in those getaways when we can!  Dad booked rooms at the Edgewater Hotel, which was pretty neat because that's the hotel we stayed in the very first time we ever went to Gatlinburg.  I was probably about 9 years old, and Dad booked one of those things where he had to listen to a timeshare spiel and in exchange we got to stay at this nice hotel right on the creek that runs through downtown.  It was cold when we came, and we used the fireplace in the hotel room - first time I'd ever seen a hotel room with a fireplace,  and I thought it was just the fanciest thing ever.  I remember the pool where you could swim under the wall and go back and forth between outside and inside.  It snowed while we were swimming.  It's a cool memory.  So neat to see it again 30 years later!  Michael and I are too cheap for a fireplace in the bedroom, so we stayed right next door at River Terrace.  We were in the furthest back building, practically on the side of the mountain.  We had a great view!

The kids were anxious to head out and walk around downtown after we checked into our hotels.  I told Asa to get his shoes on, and he said, "I'm gonna go get my DOWNtown shoes!"  That's become our thing now.  Everyone needs a pair of DOWNtown shoes!  Tate doesn't share Asa's enthusiasm for walking.  He likes cool hotel rooms.  He chose to stay and snuggle with Grandma.

There is now a flame of real fire in the fountain of the Village Shoppes.  Fancy.  Anna Kate bought a Harry Potter Hedwig bottle from the Tervis store.  Granddaddy bought candy and I bought fudge.  Gatlinburg vacation complete.  We can go home now.  

That same little indoor mall I remember so well from 30 years ago is still there, and pretty much looks the same inside.  There are lots of Old Fashioned Photo shops.  Mom brought our own gem from the time we paid for an old fashioned photo at Casa Bonita.  I remember the guy wanted me to pull the dress up above my  knee, but I had a huge scab on my knee and refused.  He repeatedly tried to get me to pull it up.  I learned to stand my ground at an early age.  We took the kids to eat at McDonald's right across from Pancake Pantry and next to the Guinness Book of World Records Museum... where you could try out being the fattest man in the world:

The pool!!! Oh how I remember this pool!  You can swim under that glass wall there and be outside.  Tate thought it was the greatest trick.  The kids swam at least three times a day.  We swam late Wednesday night, and were right back at it Thursday morning.

Michael headed far up into a remote spot in the mountains to fish all day.  We city slickers put on our DOWNtown shoes and took the elevator down to play in the creek in front of the hotel:

And of course it's a requirement to eat at Pancake Pantry!  I really don't like pancakes at all, but the kids meal comes with some amazing concoction they call peanut butter syrup, and it tastes like peanut butter fudge.  And when you dip pieces of pancake in that syrup, it tastes like cake with peanut butter fudge.  I "helped" Tate quite a bit to clear his plate.  After lunch we spent an hour at Claire's while Anna Kate meticulously picked out her $20 worth of jewelry and hair accessories for her birthday from Grandma. Then we walked the strip some more before walking back to the hotel for more swimming.

Last night Granddaddy and I took the kids to the park with the creek that's tucked away up in the corner of downtown.  This place was a highlight the last time we were in Gatlinburg. 

Anna Kate and Ellie are definitely the bravest of the bunch!  We played in the creek for more than an hour and then made sure the playground was still there.  It makes me sad that my big kids are getting too big for playgrounds.  The last time we were here three years ago, all my kids loved this playground.  This time Wes just sat on a bench and Anna Kate used my phone to take pictures of herself dabbing.  At least my little ones still know how to play!  Especially when Granddaddy makes himself part of the playground.  Dad and I rewarded ourselves for our excellent excursion-taking parent/grandparenting and dumped all the kids with Mom and went out to dinner.  Dad took me to a place called Blaine's, right on the strip in an upstairs loft-like building.  It was yummy. 

The kids swam all morning.  We couldn't talk them into going up into the national park before heading to Connie's.  I can't believe we came all the way to Gatlinburg and never even drove into the park!  At least Michael did - he spent the whole day fishing yesterday and about stranded himself upstream during a flash flood.  Thankfully he made it back!  But the kids would have nothing to do with talk of hiking.  They chanted for food, so we ended up driving straight to The Old Mill for lunch.  Just so you know, every time The Old Mill in Pigeon Forge comes up, I'm going to mention that Michael's great-great-great-something grandfather John Sevier Trotter used to own it.  Every time.