Mini Vacay

Last week we took a break from cabin life and went on a little adventure in Bryson City, NC. We like to join Eloise and Theodore on train rides through the Nantahala National forest. We’ve done this several times and really enjoy it, but driving there and back in a day is exhausting. How does one get so tired sitting in a car for hours? This is one of life’s mysteries.

But this year, Eloise came up with a plan. She booked a couple of rooms at a B&B. Eloise is my new hero. Also, Eloise and I get carsick. So she drove and I got to ride in the front seat. Neither Theodore nor Hubby argued about this. They both have experience with a nauseated wife in the car, so it was just easier to fold their long legs up in the back floorboard and deal with it.  When Eloise was planning this trip, it probably didn’t occur to her that she would have to suffer three navigators (or NAGivators) telling her where to go.

The McKinley Edwards Inn is a wonderful place! I’m including the link because words do not do it justice. The view of the Smoky Mountains was spectacular, but my personal favorite was the landscaping.

Eye candy everywhere we looked – whimsical, yet beautiful. I came away with some really good landscaping ideas for my own yard. Hubby seemed to frown whenever I mentioned this. He just doesn’t have the vision. Or a desire to do heavy lifting for me in hot weather. Maybe any kind of weather.

The last time Hubby and I stayed at a B&B, the manager told us we would have to make our own bed. This didn’t seem to be a problem. When we got to our room, there was a stack of lumber on the floor, some tools, and an instruction sheet for building a bed frame. Not so at the McKinley Edwards Inn. Jack and Mary were wonderful hosts. Mary is an artist and little touches of her talent grace the inn in unexpected places. Jack is an artist in the kitchen. His breakfasts should win some sort of award. The four of us hated to leave. It was like saying ‘good-bye’ to family. But there were other places to visit before going home. We had a train to catch.

When you click on the website, go to “The Inn”, then “The Grounds”. https://www.mckinleyedwardsinn.com/

The train ride was relaxing and surprisingly uneventful. ‘Uneventful’ is a good word for a train ride. I have seen too many ‘eventful’ train rides in the movies. The odds of those train wrecks are probably a zillion to one, but why risk it?

On to our next destination: Dry Falls, Highlands, NC.

The name ‘Dry Falls’ indicates that you should be able to walk behind the falls and stay dry. That is only partially true. You can walk behind the falls. If the river is up, you will NOT stay dry. Fortunately, I wore my one-size-fits-all poncho. In this case, ‘one-size-fits-all’ means:

one-size-fits-all-of-us-at-the-same-time

We were drenched. The waterfall was breathtaking, though. And so loud we had to use sign language. Unfortunately, all four of us were communicating in our own personal sign language, so none of us could understand the other three. Good memories. Great poncho. Sometimes my hair got wet, but that was only because the hood kept falling down over most of my chins and I had a great need to see where I was going. ‘Slippery When Wet’ might have been a nice sign to post somewhere along the way. I did notice the sign that warned us of the possibility of a fatality due to falling rock. I tried not to think about that one.

Our final stop was a little mountain town. It was so cute, it looked like the small town set on the back lot of a movie studio. We shopped in several little boutiques for souvenirs.  In case you didn’t know, the word ‘boutique’ is French for: We are more expensive than a regular store. The word ‘souvenir’ is French for: You are never going to use this thing so why don’t you wait and pay half as much for it in the big city?

Then our mini vacation was over. It was a quiet ride home except for Hubby and Theodore snoring in the back seat. It’s a real shame that two people snoring at the same time can’t harmonize in some way.

Back at home, and inspired by the landscaping at the inn, I made serious plans to attempt something similar, but on a much smaller scale. Smaller, as in my 10 x 15 flower bed on top of a hill.

We had an old birdbath that we weren’t using (technically, it’s for the birds to use, not us), so I told Hubby I would like to put his muscles to work and get that birdbath up to the cabin to satisfy my landscaping needs.

Hubby wasn’t exactly thrilled with my idea. Birdbaths are made of concrete and very heavy. I am very delicate and useless. This meant that Hubby had to do all the grunt work. If I had thought it through a little more, I might have considered waiting until autumn so Hubby’s eyebrows wouldn’t be sweating and blinding him in the hot sun. But I was afraid my landscaping dream would fade if we didn’t move quickly. Hubby moved as quickly as he could for an old guy and loaded the birdbath onto the truck bed.

Once we reached the cabin he had to take the birdbath OFF the truck bed. It was no lighter coming off the truck than it was going on. Hubby stepped on three of my flowers to get the birdbath in the spot I chose. I am sure he stepped on them accidentally. Pretty sure...

I said ‘thank you’ and Hubby took that as a dismissal. I didn’t know old guys could run that fast. But now it was time to begin my fun project. I thought the birdbath was leaning just a tad, so I gave it a little bump. My mistake. That baby tipped over and started rolling down the side of the hill.  Now might be a good time to advise you that I have a Murphy’s Law degree. If something bad can happen, it will. Here is a Murphy’s Law Impossibly Heavy Object Postulate: If your hill is covered in trees, and if you tip a concrete birdbath over on the top of that hill, the birdbath will roll all the way, miss every single tree, and land safely at the bottom of the hill. When any one of those trees could have stopped the progress of my runaway birdbath, they all failed me.

This might be what someone meant by ‘suffering for art’. This old gal was suffering. And I couldn’t ask Hubby. For one thing, I was too proud to let him know what a dumb thing I did. For another thing, I didn’t want him to die. He’s an old grandpa. So I began the slow and painful process of rolling that baby up the hill. After several attempts and failures, the best method seemed to be sitting on the ground in front of the birdbath and scooting it up the hill with my back. The process was sit, check my route over my right shoulder, scoot, sit, check my route over my left shoulder, scoot, sit. It worked, but my method of getting that birdbath back to the top took longer than loading it, driving it two hours to the cabin, unloading it, steadying it and rolling it downhill. I happened to remember that Hubby is not that much older than I and he’s not nearly as stupid. I was whipped. But landscaping art was going to be my reward. I got busy.

Now there is a whimsical birdbath in the corner of my flower bed. It contains a little succulent garden with two tiny gnomes guarding it from the deer who eat everything I plant. It is awfully cute, but even cuter to the one who lost two pounds wrestling it uphill. I checked the other day and the scratches on my back have almost completely healed.

I might have to send Jack and Mary a picture. A picture of my birdbath garden, not my back.

P.S. - Names have been changed to protect the innocent.