A couple pics to share

My parents' wheaten Scottie, Neal, has a beautiful smile.

In other news, I have freckles. Okay, so that isn't news, but now I have more.

This is home, after all.

I had an excellent vacation.

The first night was spent at Cumberland Mountain State Park. The next day, we realized we were close to Ozone Falls, the highest waterfall in Tennessee. Of course, we had to go. It was beautiful, but none of my pictures do it any justice. After hiking down the gorge and back up, we headed west. I've never knowingly been on a plateau and driving down the Great Cumberland Plateau was rather disconcerting and kind of neat.

We stayed with my great-uncle Bob, who is an excellent host and an even more excellent storyteller. We visited relatives I see once a decade or less. We visited the graveyard (Decoration Day is, after all, a Southern tradition). We visited battlefields and drove on the Natchez Trace. We stood on portions of the old Trace. Tom ate lots of good food and was thoroughly introduced to Southern cuisine and living.

We left Mississippi in the clutches of an ever-weakening and ever-dampening Arlene and headed for Tennessee. We set up camp in the Obey River Corps Park. Two days later, our tent pulled up its stakes and rolled away. In the process, we gained a new tent (thanks, Mom and Dad!) and I lost my water bottle.

After days of boating, my skin started molting and we bid adieu to my parents. We spent Friday night at Natural Tunnel State Park in Virginia, after driving through many tiny towns, including Rugby, TN, the town founded by Thomas Hughes for "second sons" and other folks in need of good honest work.

Things learned at Natural Tunnel:
+ a very impressive tunnel can form in just a million years (to contrast, the New River not too far away is approximately 100 million years old)
+ cast iron is better than a cheap cookset
+ to that end, I really need a cast iron dutch oven
+ our sleeping bags will keep us warm when summer temperatures plummet to 40F
+ we'll stay warmer, however, if we actually zip the windows and doors in the tent shut
+ colonial/pioneer reenactors who chew are not sexy
+ TastyBite Indian dinners are delightfully decadent when heated up over a hickory fire

We were going to try to stop by Natural Bridge yesterday, but the scenic routes took too much time, so I promised boy I'd take him in the next couple of weeks. When we crested the Blue Ridge at Afton and saw the valley stretching out below us, all fog and mist, I felt like I was home. Boy asked to stop to breathe in the view from one of the overlooks. It was wonderful.

Today has been spent mostly braindead and I wish I had tapioca in a bowl, rather than inside my skull.