Yesterday after school we rushed home, loaded the van, said goodbye to Buster and the cats (don't worry, Mr. Nick was coming to stay with them), and headed north to Tennessee. We stopped for our usual leg-stretching dinner in Meridian (read: ChickFilA - the parents eat while the kids run around the playground, then the kids eat in the car), then made it as far as Tuscaloosa, Alabama before stopping for the night (in time to play at the hotel pool before bed). We had borrowed an audio book from the library (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone) to see whether the kids would enjoy it (since they often ask us to read to them while driving, especially on long trips) and also because James was not allowed to play on his Kindle. The audio book was a huge hit with James (even when he didn't look like he was paying attention, he was - he'd comment on things he remembered from when I read the first half of the book to him), and liked/tolerated by Cora (she complained that we didn't listen to any songs). It took the whole drive to Tennessee and half the drive home to finish the novel, and we rewarded the kids with a viewing of the movie when we got home Monday night (which proved Cora was listening even when she was complaining, because she knew exactly what was going to happen at each scene, and hadn't previously read the book with James and I). And we did end up bending the Kindle rule at a couple of the restaurants we visited while in Chattanooga (but never in the car!)
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| Cabin #2, stage right. Two happy kids on a swing, stage left. |
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| Goats! Adorable, but they made VERY creepy middle of the night noises one night that completely freaked me out. I swear I thought I heard children crying... |
We arrived at our campground (
Raccoon Mountain) nice and early (before lunch), and our cabin wasn't ready yet (we rented a "camping cabin",
cabin #2, which was just a tiny, AIR CONDITIONED cabin with enough room for a full size bed and two twin bunk beds, but no bathroom - it did have a little refrigerator though, which was a nice bonus), so we decided to do their
Crystal Palace cave tour first thing.
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| Cave salamanders! We saw a few of them, different species. There were also a bunch of cave crickets. No bats to be seen though (which is good, I suppose, since there was no discussion of cave visitor sanitation methods to prevent the spread of White-nose Syndrome) |
After the cave tour, we checked into our cabin, made lunch (hot dogs and root beer, of course!), and the kids dug around for acorns while we decided how we wanted to spend our first afternoon in Tennessee!
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