Snowpocalyse 2014

So, by now, I'm sure most of you have heard about the snow/ice storm that completely shutdown the south a few weeks ago. Here in the metropolis of Snead, we got enough ice to make driving conditions horrible. We felt a little slighted by the amount of snow we received though, especially compared to those to our south. This winter has had some crazy weather, especially the amount of times snow and freezing temps have been forecasted for us. It's almost unheard of. Low and behold, more snow was forecasted for us a week ago. Not wanting to have a repeat of the last storm, everything closed early and everyone stayed home. Good thing too because it more than made up for that last snow amount. We had almost 8" of snow! That's the most snow I've seen since the Blizzard of '93 when I got 17" at my house!  Here are some pictures...

 

 

 

 



All wrapped up in his work...

Today, Lance got all wrapped up in his work...

 

 

 

 

Happy Fall Y'all!



A Toddler in the Smokies...

We spent a few days in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee a couple of weeks ago. I've been there many times, but never with a toddler! Before we went, I did a lot of research on what kind of activities and places would be good for toddlers. Both Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge have tons of activities for kids, but most were a little too old for kids Reed's age (23 months). Our trip was pretty successful, with only a few meltdowns (not all were Reed, ha!), so I thought I'd share some tips for any of you out there in blog land who may be planning a trip to the Smokies with a toddler of your own! These are in random order as they pop out of my brain, so I hope they are helpful!

 

• First thing: Where to stay. We chose to stay in Gatlinburg. Before Reed was born, we camped. We're not taking Reed camping until he's potty trained. Too much trouble! If we didn't camp, we always stayed in a cabin. The downside of staying in a cabin with a 23 month old? Stairs. Most cabins have stairs, and I didn't want to spend my vacation keeping Reed from falling down the stairs. We stayed in Mountain Village Inn Condos. It was about a block from downtown Gatlinburg. No loading up in the car seat and searching for a parking spot or looking  for trolley schedules. (If you do stay outside Gatlinburg and want to visit, I do highly recommend riding the trolleys. Very cheap, plenty of parking at the trolley station, and Reed loved to ride them!). All we had to do was put him in the stroller and away we went.

 

 

 

• Speaking of Gatlinburg, Reed really enjoys strolling around the streets there. They are very stroller friendly. He's a people watcher. We ran into a group of young cloggers, and he could've watched them for hours. He was very happy with a chocolate dipped pretzel rod from one of the candy stores. (And we were happy he was occupied because we were eating a donut from the Donut Friar, yum!)

 

 

• One day, we went into the national park. I highly recommend stopping by Sugarlands Visitor Center, just outside Gatlinburg. It has a nice museum full of animals, which Reed loved of course, a movie theater, and a nice gift shop. When we go to the Smokies, I prefer to do my souvenir shopping either here or at the Cades Cove Visitor Center because all proceeds benefit the park.  Just behind the visitor center is a trail to Cataract Falls. It is a flat, mostly smooth, 1/2 mile walk to a nice waterfall. Lance's cousin gave us a hiking backpack that a toddler could ride in a few years, so we decided to try it out! Reed loved it! If you don't have a backpack, you might could use a stroller on this trail. You would have to pick it up and carry it at a few places though. If it's a hot day when you go, would be a nice place to cool off in the water.

 

 

• Also in the national park...Cades Cove! One of our favorite places! We took Loop Road, and Reed enjoyed being able to get out of his car seat and "snack" while looking for animals (what? you mean you aren't supposed to snack the entire 11 miles around??). We also picnicked at the Cades Cove Visitor Center. I'll give picnicking tips later. 

 

 

• Another day, we went over to Pigeon Forge. We ate at the Old Mill for supper. I would suggest getting there before 5:00, so you won't have to wait very long. Reed really likes the corn fritters and corn chowder served with every meal! After we ate, we went behind the Old Mill to Patriot Park and fed the ducks. You can get some food for a quarter out of a dispenser. Reed really enjoyed watching them. A new place in Pigeon Forge is called "The Island". They have recently built a giant ferris wheel called "The Great Smoky Mountain Wheel". It's like 200 ft. tall and has enclosed, air conditioned seats. We decided to try it out. Good views, but not sure I'm going to do it again. Tickets were a little expensive, and I was way out of my comfort zone. Reed didn't want to stay seated, and it was freaking me out, lol.  Also here was a carousel, but Reed didn't want to ride it.  They are adding a lot more things at The Island, so it looks to be a good place to hang out with the family in the future.

 

 

 

• Our condo was located just off Light #6 in Gatlinburg, which is also the road you turn on to go to the Gatlinburg Motor Nature Trail. It's similar to driving around Cades Cove. We went early one morning to beat the crowd and the heat. On the Motor Nature Trail you can hike to the only waterfall in the park that you can walk behind. It's called Grotto Falls. The parking for this fills up fast, so get there early! It's 1 1/2 miles to the falls. The trail is pretty rooty/rocky and steep in some areas, but very doable. Especially if you have a toddler backpack! We passed one guy that had one kid in front, and one kid in back! Reed fell asleep right when we made it to the falls! ha! He did wake up when we were leaving and really liked getting wet behind the falls. He cried when we left! It took us about 2 hours round trip.

 

 

• Between our condo and the Motor Nature Trail is a park called Mynatt Park. It has picnic tables, grills, a walking path, and a great stream for older kids to play in. After we hiked, we grilled some burgers and hot dogs here. Reed enjoyed "exploring".

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Here are some of the things I did to make our trip a little easier:

• Always, always schedule nap time! Nobody is happy when there is no nap!
• Prepare as many food/snacks ahead of time as you can! Before we left, I fixed PB&J sandwiches, ham and cheese sliders ,cut up fruit, and made out the hamburger patties. I even made pancake muffins and a breakfast casserole. It was so much easier just to be able to pull something out of the cooler and eat it. No trying to make a sandwich while Reed fussed cause he was starving to death. No waking up in the morning to fix breakfast, just take it out of the fridge and heat it up! No raw meat hands while trying to make burgers for grilling!
• We have a giant cooler, but I opted to take two smaller ones. One we used just for drinks, so we wouldn't have to dig around for what we wanted. The other one we used for food. I bought a couple of plastic tubs at the Dollar Tree for use in the cooler. I stored bagged fruit in one and sandwiches/sandwich supplies in the other (cheese, lettuce, condiment packs). Using the tubs insured that none of our food would be floating around in water getting soggy.
• I also bought some tubs to use for our bathroom stuff. I used one for each of us. It was very easy just to pull it out of our suitcase and stick it on the bathroom cabinet. Also handy in case of spills.
• I used a small laundry basket (also found at Dollar Tree!) to contain Reed's toys. It sat nicely in the floorboard of the truck while we were traveling, and we kept it in the living room for easy access when we were at the condo.

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I'm glad you made it to the end! Hope I could help make your trip a little easier!

 

Cades Cove

I know I'm a little late posting about this, seeing as though I've been back from camping in the Smokies for almost 3 weeks now. Please forgive me, it's been busy on the farm!

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For those of you who have never been to Cades Cove, I thought that I would give you a little tour! It is our favorite place to go camping! Cades Cove is in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park near the towns of Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, and Townsend, TN. There is an 11-mile loop around the cove that you can drive, hike, or bicycle (been there, done that, too tired to buy a t shirt).

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Along the loop there is plenty of scenery.

Mountains, pastures, streams, trees...it's a photographers dream!

I took this picture on a Ranger-led "night hike" around the loop.

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There are also tons of wildlife in the Cove too.

We saw lots of deer.

This little guy landed on Lance's shoulder during an early morning hay ride. I think he's trying to blend in with his shirt.

These Toms were trying to impress the ladies, but they were being ignored.

This guy kept hanging around our campsite.

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There are also a few lesser-known sites in the Cove too.

This is Gregory Cave. It is located on an unmarked trail around Loop Road. You have to climb down the rocks to get inside, but all the caves in the Cove are closed to the public right now because of a break out of "White Nose" disease in bats. It is rumored that during prohibition, this cave was used as a night club. It was also a fall out shelter during the 50s.

There are also plenty of cemetaries. Some are located beside the old churches in the Cove, but some are also located on some unmarked trails. When you get to looking at many of the graves from the 1800s, many people didn't survive childbirth.

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Probably the most well known attractions in Cades Cove are the old buildings.

This is the John Oliver Place. It is the oldest log home in the Cove. The Olivers were the first settlers in the Cove and lived here with the indians. They were running out of food, so one day John went hunting, got lost, and didn't come back for a few days, his wife was scared out of her mind, and when he returned, she demanded that they move back home. You know what convinced her to stay? A couple of milk cows. Yeah, that'll do it.

This is the Primitive Baptist Church. This was the first church in the Cove. The Olivers asked their "home church" that was 40 miles away if it was okay if they could build one closer. I can't imagine what bothered them about a 40 mile buggy ride, lol.

This is the Methodist Church. There are two doors on the church because men sat on one side and women sat on the other. I guess they couldn't both use the same door either. If you notice the foundation of this church and many other buildings in the Cove, you can see that they sit on small piles of rocks. This is because one time a law was passed that you had to pay property taxes on everything that touched the ground, so people just built on top of rocks. If only that would work today.

This is the Missionary Baptist Church. It was formed by people who were kicked out of the Primitive Baptist Church because they supported mission work. Never have figured out why the Primitive Church didn't like missions, guess thats why they were called "primitive". lol. Many other churches in the Cove split because of their stance on the Civil War. Many people in the Cove were Union supporters even though they lived in the South.

Half-way around the loop is the Cades Cove Visitor Center. There is a gift shop, along with some other historic buildings. The house shown here is known as "Aunt Becky's House". Becky Cable lived here in the late 1800s-early 1900s. She never married and farmed 600 acres of land by herself. If I had to farm our land by myself, I think I would have to hire Aunt Becky.
Also at the Visitor Center is Cable Mill. It is a water powered grist mill which is still in use today. Nearby, there is a blacksmith shop which does demonstrations, a sorghum mill, and some cantilever barns.

This is the Henry Whitehead Place. His wife died, leaving him with 3 daughters to raise, so he ended up marrying the woman that lived in that little bitty house that you see connected to the back of the big house. She lived there because her brothers quickly built that house when her husband abandoned her and their son. When they got married, Henry built the bigger house connecting to the little house.

This is the Dan Lawson Place. This was one of the few places in the Cove to have electricity later on. There is a story about the woman who lived directly across the Cove from Dan always knowing when to get her daughters up for school because Dan turned his lights on at the same time every morning.

This is the Tipton Place. There are some smaller buildings out from the house that used to be a general store. Later on, there was a phone line stretching from the store to the house so that when a customer came in, they could get service. There was also phone service around the entire Cove, but they could not call outside the Cove. There is no cell phone service there either, so I know how they felt, haha.

This is the Carter Shields Cabin. The guy that lived here was wounded in the Battle of Shiloh in the Civil War and only lived here for 11 years.
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I hope yall have enjoyed my Cades Cove Tour. I'm beginning to think the Park Service should hire me to give tours, lol. Anyways, for those of you who normally go to the beach, but don't want to get oily this year, or those of you who just don't go anywhere, why don't you check out Cades Cove, it's much cooler, and it's free!

Back to the ol' grind stone....

We're back from our camping trip! We could've stayed another week or month. If you've never visited the Smoky Mountains, it's worth the trip! Lance has been going camping in Cades Cove ever since he was little, and we have gone every summer for the past three years!

Here is a picture of our campsite. Along with our tent, we had an EZ-Up to go over our picnic table (it's very rainy in the smokies!), a hammock, and an outdoor shower (which isn't half-bad to use!).

Lance is the king of the grill when we go camping,

And I am the queen of iron skillet cooking! The biscuits were baked in our dutch oven, and the eggs and bacon were cooked on my iron skillet griddle. Mmm, mmm good.

If you have been here before, or if you clicked on that Cades Cove link above, you know that there is an 11-mile loop you can drive/hike/bike that is full of scenic views, animals, and historic buildings. We have biked it before, but this time it was driving only!

Wild Turkey...

Deer...
Bear...
Historic Buildings...

Beautiful Scenery...

Clingmans Dome, the highest point in the Smokies at 6,643 ft...
On Saturday, Lance's Uncle Jim, Aunt Nell, and Nell's mother came up to visit! They stayed in a nearby motel.
We hope you enjoyed our vacation pictures as much as we enjoyed our vacation!

Stay tuned for the adventures of the vacation stowaway!