One more picture from our hike to the waterfalls Saturday.  I got this picture so I’d remember the names of the waterfalls we hiked to.

We finished up the day visiting the Bryson City Cemetery.  I do love an old cemetery, and try to visit any cool ones I see on any trip.  This one was on top of a hill at the edge of town.  We enjoyed sitting on the benches underneath the great old trees and looking down at the town.

Charlotte and I have never done any hiking on our birthday trips before.  As a matter of fact I’m not sure Charlotte has ever done much hiking ever.  I really wanted to check out the Road to Nowhere that I’d heard about, though, so Saturday morning we got up and headed over.  When the government took people’s land to create Fontana Lake back in the 1940’s the powers that be promised them a road would be created all the way around the lake – 200+ miles.  Being the government, though – and in all fairness it was during WWII – they built about five miles of it, including this tunnel, which is the very end of how far they got.  Beyond it it’s all dirt hiking trails.  It was pretty cool to see, though, even with all the graffiti.

When we were at the Visitors Center the day before Charlotte got lots of info from the man working there, including information about three waterfalls that were near the tunnel. Here I am at Tom Clark Falls, which was described in the brochure as ‘wispy.’ Really pretty, though.

After our visit to the Cat Museum we checked into our motel and headed in to town. We ate a yummy lunch at Jimmy Mac’s, and spent some time checking out the town. We finished up the day at the Swain County Heritage Museum, which really was one of the best local history museums I have ever visited. We didn’t even have an hour to check it out by the time we got there, but what we did get to see about the history of Bryson City and the rest of the county was interesting.

There were some really interesting exhibits of different tools used by various professions around the area, including this one from the shoemakers

This past weekend my friend Charlotte and I went on our annual birthday trip, and spent a long weekend in the Bryson City, NC, area.  We had a great time – as always – and our first stop was the American Museum of the House Cat.  I love a museum of any kind, and Charlotte and I have found some very interesting ones on these annual adventures.  This one certainly was :-).  It was two rooms just filled with every single thing you could imagine about pet cats.  There were maybe a couple of tigers in there, but mostly every single display was of a house cat.  This is one of probably ten or twelve shelves he had just of wind up toys from over the years.  We were really lucky in that the owner was our tour guide, so it was very interesting – and he wound up a couple of toys for us.  Definitely something to see!

I really liked this shelf of cats. Their eyes followed you in every direction. I had seen that in flat paintings before, but never really in a statue that I can remember. It was a fun stop on our trip.

Lindee and I have had season tickets for the Broadway Lights series in Charlotte for probably fourteen years, but we are not renewing them next year.  I am a little sad, of course, because we’ve had so much fun, but she is so busy with the girls’ schedules now that it’s becoming something of a headache for her to work out the schedule.  Anyway, our final play was last week – Hamilton.  What a way to go out.  I couldn’t believe it could live up to the hype, but it was AMAZING!!!  Here is our picture at the theatre.

When Clara was here last week she taught me how to make a new craft – glue bookmarks.  Very cool  Here she is hard at work giving me a demonstration.

Yesterday was the big match for Mallory and the rest of her girls golf team.  This is the only action shot I got of her all day, but she did great.  She scored a 96 on 18 holes.  The only other time they’d played 18 holes she scored a 105, so definitely improving!

These three. SMH. Terryn, Mallory, Ginger. They have all rotated among the top three all year, and are such buddies. Ginger made the all-region team yesterday, and we were SO proud!

My friend Meg’s daughter Hope is loving college so much that she hasn’t been home much since she went back in August, but she was here over the weekend.  And we went out to eat Mexican after church Sunday to get at least a little bit of visiting time in.  Clara was with us – Lindee was working and Mallory had gone with Jackson to play golf – and I got this quick picture before we left the restaurant.

Last night Jeff & I headed out to Kings Mountain National Military Park to take the nighttime tour.  A friend from church, Cathy Allen, told me about it, and Jeff agreed to go with me.  It really was very cool.  We walked around the very nice, paved Battlefield Trail, and there were reenactors along the way.  This was the wife and daughter of one of the soldiers, looking for their husband and father to bring him food and water.  All the reenactors did a great job.