Kayaking with Bailey and Jessica

Chilhowee Lake goodness.

Little River

FINALLY! After working just about every day this summer, now that I'm three weeks into school we finally got a chance to break out the kayaks. Bailey and I took the yaks to the car wash yesterday and gave 'em the good once over and de-sluggification for mine and gave the Rover its first proper exterior cleanin'. We surprised Bailey today with a new boat of her very own, so of course we had to go test it out. Bailey, her uncle David, and I threw the boats in the trailer and made for Little River. We paddled down just below Coulter's Bridge (about 5 minutes... past the bridge jumpers but not so far we couldn't paddle back up river) and tethered the boats to a patch of cane and hopped out to practice Bailey's snorkeling skills. Although she's been wanting to get into snorkeling since forever, I'd been really worried she'd freak out, hate it, and never give it a chance again. So, I put a life jacket on her, her mask, snorkel, and flippers. She laid down in the water, I held the jacket for about 30 seconds, and off she went, never looking back. She's a natural! Great time, no pictures, back to school tomorrow--

Splash Country

We are burned to a crisp. What else is there to say?
Aside from: Splash Country opens an hour early for season passholders on Saturday morning. IT IS AWESOME. We got to go in, set up, no crowd, no rush, staked claim to great seats, and got in the wave pool with the massive crowd of, o, five people. Good stuff. Next time I'll remember to bring the sun screen in from the car. (Ironically, neither Bailey nor Myers got burned, although Bailey is on a medicine that calls for limited sun exposure. Go figure. If Jodie were a super hero, though, her name would be Lobster Girl.)

Fourth of July

Fourth of July... woo! Since Alcoa didn't do the duck pond this year, everyone on our side of the county stocked up on fireworks. Usually all the houses down our stretch of the Pike are shooting off fireworks, but there was double previous years this time. David came down and shot off his leftovers, including some of the big artillery shells, and it was great. We set up hammocks and chairs in the yard and took turns watching fireworks at our house and several of the neighbors.

Little River Stream Ecology

Narrative coming soon... Unfortunately, there are no pics of the 3 copperheads basking on a pile of rocks in the middle of the river!

Father's Day at Metcalf Bottoms

We continued (restarted) one of my favorite family traditions... Father's Day at Metcalf Bottoms. Huge storms the night before, so it was empty at the picnic area. The only problem was that it put the water up way to high and brisk for the kids to play in. Still, a bad day in the mountains is better than most good days anywhere else.

Indian Boundary

Kick-off weekend for summer break! We headed to Indian Boundary for a late weekend to properly break in the camper (finally!). All the electrical worked great (supppppppper AC) and we had one of the prime campsites... that's what reserving in Feb. will do for you. We camped right on the lake. We could sit in the campsite and watch Bailey and Myers go down to the edge of the lake and fish. One of my favorite things about camping at IB is that if you want to take the canoe out, all you have to do is stand up, walk to the water, pull it in, and go. If we're going to paddle on Little River from home, there's at least an hour (usually two) of prep time getting the car, kayaks, kids, and car shuttles ready. The most exciting part of the weekend was getting to be there for 3 life star landings. Monday morning a girl in the campground had a seizure and had to be lifted out, then in the afternoon there were two wrecks on the Cherohala skyway that required air support.
We also learned a very valuable lesson--before we take Myers camping again, we are going to have to go to the Dollar store and get about 15 bucks worth of knick-knacky activities... water colors, play dough, etc. We were well prepped with big activities, but nothing for the down time. I figured canoeing, biking, hiking, fishing, swimming, etc. would keep everyone happy, but the instant we stopped one activity he was ready for something else. Ah, I envy his stamina.

Myers's Best Friend

Ah, the joys of yard ecology. Here are some pics of Myers and his best friend. It'll work best in dialog:
"This is roly poly. Him is my best friend. I lub him so much!"

One of the few animals/invertibrates that Myers has seen and not wanted to eat... like Sam the Lobster at Red Lobster and the Crawdads we caught last time at the river.

 

 

 

 

The Big Read

Next week on May 11 my Language Arts class will be sponsoring a pilot attempt at creating a mini-Big Read (where everyone in the area reads one book in the same time frame to spur discussion of issues raised, etc.) in our school.
For this year the idea of doing a novel was a little taunting for a first go, so we are doing The Lorax. Every class in the school will read the Lorax during homeroom and then we will encourage all class periods to have discussions or complete activities related to topics in the Lorax and their subject area.
If anyone has neat ideas or suggestions that I can pass on to math, science, or social studies teachers in particular, let me know!
Thanks--

Elk flu?

Nothing says "It's time for an impromptu trip to Cades Cove" like a healthy case of the flu.
To celebrate Bailey's double whammy of strep throat and flu, we drove up to the cove for the afternoon. When you think about it, there are few better places to go to get away from people than the Loop road on a rainy Saturday. Plus, we had to buy our obligatory "Garbage Kills Bears" and "Save the Hemlocks" bumper stickers for the new car. Woo doggie!
Even though it was the middle of the afternoon we were happy to see 14ish deer and rumors of a bear just around the bend. We didn't follow the camera-toting Alabamians to find out, though.
Pictures will be coming soon--