Today we are in Clayton, GA preparing for a day at the Cherokee Ruby and Sapphire Mine in Franklin, NC tomorrow.

On the way here, we stopped on a whim at the Tallulah Gorge State Park and went on a short hike. Max is with us.  The park is pretty enough that we’re contemplating coming back next week to do a test run of our camping equipment.  So far we’ve only used it in the back yard, with our house right there as both a physical and emotional safety net.  We should probably give a real camping night a try before we pack everything up and head to Europe in two weeks.

Tonight is “roughing it” in a Days Inn (motel) that allows dogs. Pretty bare-bones accomodation, but clean enough. The three kids have to share one queen size bed, so we’ll see how tonight goes.  We ate dinner in a fantastic local steak house and all five of us enjoyed filet mignon, so the roughing it in our hotel room is a relative thing.

Next morning:

Last night was pretty bad, but not for the reasons we feared.   We expected that putting all three kids in one bed, sideways, would cause trouble and a sleepless night.  But, once the initial fighting over blanket distribution and foot boundary infractions was settled, they all three fell fast asleep and stayed that way through the night.

We chose this hotel because of their liberal dog policy, and other people must have done the same.  The hotel was chock full of dogs.  (When we left for dinner, a couple of the hotel employees were desperately trying to tie one of the room doors shut with string.  Someone had left a German Shepherd in there and he had figured out how to work the lever-style door handle.  He kept letting himself out to roam the parking lot.)

All during the night, one dog would be set off by some little noise or other and cause a Pongo & Perdita “twilight bark” chain reaction that rippled through the hotel like a wave.  Max was on high alert.  It doesn’t take much to put Max on high alert, either.  Under mundane circumstances he goes nuts if he spots a bumblebee out the window, and he hits full-on berserker mode if a neighbor’s cat wanders onto our front porch.  His territorial instincts are acute and he feels it’s his responsibility to alert the family to any potential threat or trespasser.  Being in an exotic location and knowing that so many strange dogs (i.e., enemies) were in close proximity was more than he could handle.

Finally, I locked him in the bathroom … where he stuck his nose underneath the door and made a high-pitched, worried whine that sounded like a subway car pulling into a station (“hnnnnnnnnnnnnn”) — without pause.  I have no idea when he managed to take a breath.  Adam and I probably didn’t get more than 2 hours of sleep.  (I still can’t believe none of that racket woke the kids.  They slept like rocks.)

At 8:00 a.m., blearey-eyed and already tired, we packed up and headed out for the ruby mine with a knackered dog and three well-rested, energetic children.  We showed up right at 9:00 a.m. when they opened, and we weren’t even the first ones there.   I think we were the only newbies … everyone else seemed to be hard-core rock hounds.

This is an alluvial mine, where the dirt several feet thick along the creek bed is full of all sorts of treasures.  There are large deposits of rubies, garnets, and sapphires as well as moonstone, rutile and sillimanite.

The folks running the mine were fantastic.  It’s very difficult for amateurs to tell which stones are gems and which are just plain old ordinary rocks.  Quartz especially is tricky, because it’s shiny and has a jewel-like look to it.  As one of the guys explained, you just have to get good at recognizing quartz, because without it there wouldn’t be anything else of worth.  The geological conditions that create gems also create copious amounts of quartz.  You don’t get one without the other.

We had three different employees spend an extraordinary amount of time helping us sort through our trays and each of them seemed genuinely interested in teaching us about what we were looking at.  I highly recommend Cherokee Ruby and Sapphire Mine to anyone wanting a good gem-hunting experience.  The folks there are truly top-notch.

All of the other mining customers were serious searchers and I think most of them were regulars.  This mine is located near quite a bit of Cherokee land, which means there are casinos around.  Hunting for precious stones is much like gambling and I can imagine that a lot of the folks picking through buckets of mud for treasure would otherwise be at the casinos cranking slot machine handles.   Each bucket of dirt has the potential big hit inside, so every time you finish one, you want to do just one more … the next bucket will surely have a once-in-a-lifetime stone in it!  I’m not much of a gambler myself, but I was definitely feeling the pull for just one more bucket.  I easily understand how it can become an obsession.

We had lunch in Sylvan, NC (very cute little town with lots of charm and plenty of arts & crafts shops) and then drove over the Great Smoky Mountains down into Tennessee.

Tonight, we’re staying just outside of the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge/Sevierville area — kind of a combination Orlando/Las Vegas for Rednecks and Appalachian mountainfolk.

The best part of the afternoon was visiting the Smoky Mountain Knife Works; the largest knife, sword and machete vendor in the world.  It was a lot more fun that it might otherwise sound. Inside they had three huge floors of merchandise, a museum, and an “artifact” section with all sorts of old Civil War through Vietnam war artifacts and relics for sale, as well as gems, crystals, fossils & etc.  Each of us left with a little something.

Our second hotel night was a dream compared to the first.  We stayed in a Baymont Inn & Suites that was also dog-friendly, but this time the room was on the third floor with an inside door (rather than a door that opened into the parking lot, 1960’s motel-style) so it was much quieter and Max was a lot more relaxed.  It even had a small balcony so Max could go outside.

Max was a true champ on this trip, that first night notwithstanding.  I’ve never known such a well-behaved dog. Considering that Adam and I are terrible dog trainers, all credit for being an all-around great guy belongs exclusively to Max.  (Or perhaps to the breeder, who specifically chooses her Aussies based on their great temperaments.  Either way, whether it’s good genes or just good luck, Max is a tremendous dog.)   He was welcome almost everywhere we tried to take him.

(Side note:  Max ate very well on this trip — the first night, Holden ordered filet mignon and didn’t finish it, so it ended up being Max’s breakfast the next morning.  The second night, neither Holden nor Josie was able to finish their Outback burgers, so Max got those also.  With all the leftovers, he didn’t eat a single bite of dog food for two days.  Now that we’re back home, he’s spoiled as can be and keeps staring at the fridge and only eats his kibble at bedtime when he’s absolutely certain nothing better is in the offing.)

The next morning we drove through Pigeon Forge, which is probably most famous for being the site of Dolly Parton’s Dollywood.  From what I could tell, it’s a water park.  We didn’t go because neither Holden nor Josie can swim, which is something we’re going to address later this summer when we get back from Europe.

We really want to go to the Galapagos Islands over Christmas break, but we have some hurdles to get over first:  my nearly-crippling boat phobia, and Holden’s equally crippling fear of getting water in his eyes.  (He can hardly even bring himself to wash his face in the sink.)  Passing Dollywood sparked a conversation between Adam and I about how to address these problems and Holden took offense.  His argument was “Josie can’t swim, either!  She’s as much to blame as me!  Work on her!”  Josie didn’t even bother to look up from her iPad and said, “Holden, I don’t know how to swim.  I’m not afraid to swim.  There’s a huge difference.”  And she’s absolutely right.  We’ll have to come up with some way of fixing Holden and me so that we’re not held back from doing something as exciting and remarkable as visiting the Galapagos Islands.  Fears (the irrational ones, anyway) are good for nothing but conquering.

Both Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg are set up as mini Orlandos, but have a more old-fashioned feel to them.  The whole place looks like a movie set for 1955.  They offer river rafting, fishing, zip lines, a Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum, an aquarium, dinner shows and a whole bunch of other things.  We only drove through, but it looked so neat we’re planning to go back.  It’s only about a 4 hour drive from our house.

Once you get past Gatlinburg, you head straight into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  It is awesome, in the true sense of the word.  The road through has lots of little places to pull over and hundreds of walking/hiking trails.  We pulled over to explore the woods in several different spots, and hit a few of the scenic overlooks, too.

The above photo was taken in an old-growth area of forest.  Before this area became a national park, it was very heavily logged and most of the old trees were cut down.  The areas that remain are extremely valuable now, as they are among the only old-growth forested areas left in North America.  With a lot of the trees being 500+ years old, it is exceedingly valuable now to scientists studying climate change.

It’s also great for experiencing wildlife.  Plenty of flora and fauna to see.  None of it was as interesting as this, though:

Mountain Farm Museum and Mingus Mill

First we came to an old grist mill up in the mountains, started in 1886 and still operating.  It fell into disrepair in the early 1900s, but was restored by the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression.  (Something useful gets done, and people get to earn an honest wage for honest work.  No handouts, everybody wins.  We need more of that now.)  It’s been running ever since, and for $8.95 you can purchase bags of ground corn meal or wheat flour from grains grown in the area.  The money goes toward upkeep of the mill.  We bought a bag of corn meal.

This mill is somewhat unique because it is powered by a turbine rather than a water wheel.  It produces 11 horsepower, which is enough to get the job done.