When our friends Mike and Jennifer found out I had a long-time wish to go gem mining, they invited us to go with them to Franklin – a quaint little city nestled in the Smoky Mountains in the extreme southwest corner of North Carolina. The company they work for owns a cabin up in the woods and they let the employees use it for vacations, so we reserved a week in the middle of May to make the trip up.
We left Friday morning with two mini-vans packed with 7 people (6 adults and a 2-year-old), a small dog and supplies for the week – food, clothing and entertainment. The drive up was quick and uneventful… the highlight of the drive there was seeing a place in Georgia called “Goats on the Roof“, which was a restaurant & country store with grass growing and live goats running around on the roof! I definitely want to stop there if we ever go by again.
We got to the cabin around 5 o’clock, so we had plenty of light left to unpack the cars. Here’s the cabin from the end of the driveway:
It’s three stories with decks on the back and wood throughout, and it’s decorated as an old-fashioned, down home cabin, complete with animal skins and deer heads hanging on the walls. Here’s part of the hearth and a perfect example of the lovely style:
After unpacking the cars, we threw together a delicious dinner of veggies and pasta, made with vegetables harvested from Mike’s garden… tomatoes, onions, peppers and eggplant. Jen and Michelle are really good cooks!
Just as we were finishing our meal, a rain storm blew in, with lightning and big winds. Not too long after that, we lost power! So we found some candles and settled in to wait for the electricity to come back. After a while we heard some commotion outside and discovered the electric company guys out at the end of driveway, cutting up a big tree that had fallen on the power lines. At that point we all decided to call it a night and everybody went to bed. Luckily we had explored enough to make our way downstairs and into bed by candlelight.
So that was our first day. I’ll be posting an entry for every day of our vacation, so check back later for more updates. Oh, and here’s another picture from the first day – Trav, Bleys and Mike at Tallulah Falls:
In this series of vacation posts, you can click any picture for a larger version.