O.K., here come the pics & vacation story.
First off, we left MIL's house at 5:30 in the morning. Around 8:30 I get pulled over by FHP. Dunno why, for once I was not speeding. There was some high fog, but visibility was great. Apparently the FHP does not care about visibility, they want your headlights on. *sighs* I ended up getting a $104 ticket for not wearing my seatbelt instead of the $160 ticket for not having my headlights on. The headlight ticket would have put points onto my license.
So, we drive & drive & drive. North of Atlanta we take I-985 which sort of stops being an interstate and starts being a 4 lane divided highway with cross traffic & traffic lights. I never saw such a thing!
We finally get to our cabin just as it was getting dark. Scary, windy, mountain roads in Franklin, NC high up in the Smokey Mountains.
Here is our cabin
It was a cute 1 bedroom, and there were 6 others on the property. We were the only ones there, so we had the place to ourselves.
The man who owns the place has 2 dogs, Dixie & Boudreaux
Shadow like these dogs & they had much fun running around together.
This noisy little creek ran behind our cabin
On the other side of the creek was a field full of goats
Every time the goats would see us they would come running down to the fence wagging their tails. There was a dog living in the field who would not allow you to come close enough to visit with the goats.
The first day we went gem mining. We went to Sheffield Mine. $15/person and they give you 2 buckets of dirt. The dirt is red clay and you get to scrub the muck away from the rocks to see what you have. I found a 5 carat ruby, and a few smaller ones plus a couple of sapphires. Interesting factiod, all rubies are sapphires. Sapphires come in every color of the rainbow, but there are no red ones because they are rubies.
Here is a shot of the sluice with all of the folks scrubbing mud away.
Here is DH hard at work looking for the Maharajah's gems
The mine also had a cat named Merlin who came out & walked the line each time new people came.
They also had 2 dogs that seemed like they could care less if people came or not.
This is Yazzy
This is Spirit
Most of the stones that you find are about the size of a healthy booger. There had been several inches of rain the day before we got there, and we actually found stones in the parking area that had washed up.
When we got back to the cabin we see that the owner has provided us with some shovels & screens. He tells us that we can pull gems right out of the creek. Amazingly we actually did.
The second day we went canoeing on the Little Tennessee River. I am not a boat person, but Shadow & DH love it.
Here is Shadow waiting patiently for us to get going
Some scenic views from the canoe
When we finish unloading everything I will get some pics of the gemstones we found.
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