The Land Between the Lakes was one of my campgrounds. The views were beautiful. The campsites were spacious and the bathrooms were nice.
They had this incredibly interesting and well done living history farm. The displays reflected Halloween theme games from the time period.
They made good use of gourds.
I loved this scrap wool blanket. I would like to make something similar with my scraps of wool.
The guide told us that the houses would start out with one room and an open hearth for cooking. But the first goal of every homesteading family was to add on a kitchen and get a wood stove for cooking on. It was much safer for women (no skirts catching on fire) and it was easier to cook nice meals on.
I loved the crockery. The batch of homemade soap drying seems to make everything come to life.
I have so much admiration for the workers who are really making homemade 1850s style baskets, soap, weaving, yarn, cheese, etc. there on a day to day basis.
Handmade beeswax candles. Meat or grain grinder. They said that they are working with local Amish on several projects. That makes a lot of sense to me -- since they are one of the few groups that still has these skill sets.
They had a few Dominique chickens, but I don't think think the ratio of hens to rooster was quite right. A lot of them had bare spots on their backs.
They raise Leicester Long Wool sheep and spin yarn from their fleeces.
They had a cute little duck pond. I would like to do something similar once we don't have any toddlers at risk on our homestead.
They had some friendly American Guinea Hogs that the kids enjoyed petting. Right away they wanted to get some piggies. Guinea hogs are wonderful homestead lard hogs. We have taken some to butcher and eaten the meat and can attest to its excellent flavor. They are good foragers, but grow very slowly. Keeping a guinea hog for a year or two would allow it to fatten nicely on our acorns and scraps, but it would also be a lot more work than standard pigs and allow the kids to get very attached.
An old fashioned game of checkers. They had a big scavenger hunt with a prize at the end. The kids worked hard to find all the elements.
I loved these ladle gourds and old fashioned bucket gourds. I ordered seeds so that I can try growing my own this year.
The Land Between the Lakes Park also had a buffalo and elk preserve that we were able to drive through.
They also had a nature center with birds of prey and several other interesting species. We were there just in time to see them receive their "enrichment" treats for Halloween.
The enrichment treats consisted of puzzles involving pumpkins for them to solve. In the case of the bobcat, he had to find the white mice hidden in the jack-o-lantern.
The red wolves had some meat hidden in jack-o-lanterns as well. They were fun to watch pull the outside apart to get to the ground meat inside.
The opossum had a salad bowl pumpkin. He was a very messy eater, but not afraid of us and we got a close look at him. I did not know that possums eat lots of ticks and also that they almost never carry rabies because their body temperature is too low. I like them a lot more knowing that.
They had several birds of prey that they told us about on our tour. I especially liked seeing the red-tailed hawk up close as we have several of them living in the woods behind our house.
The coyotes got jipped in my opinion -- they got straight pumpkins without meat or carvings for their treat. It rolled very nicely down the hill in their enclosure, but otherwise seemed boring to them and those of us watching.
Next we headed to Memphis. We ate lunch at the famous Arcade Diner.
The highlight of our visit to Memphis was the National Civil Rights museum. It's housed in the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King was shot.
It was very moving to walk through the history of slavery and segregation that blacks have come through. I was appalled to read about all the rules enforcing separation of whites and blacks in the south even in relatively recent times, 1930s-1960s.
We sat in the Rosa Parks bus and talked about what happened there. We read and watched video clips of peaceful protests that southern whites reacted to violently.
It was a lot to take in. After about 2 hours our minds were pretty saturated and baby A was screaming, ready for a nap.
We wanted to go to the Peabody Hotel to see the famous ducks come down to the fountain. But they do not let anyone in now who is not staying at the hotel, as a Covid-19 precaution. So we went to an old time soda fountain and store in downtown Memphis, A Schwab Dry Goods Store. They had lots of kookie gifts and T-shirts. It was okay. The birthplace of rock-n-roll was not a terribly interesting place for kids.
We wanted to try some Tennessee Barbecue and heard that Central Barbecue was the place to go. It was pretty good. I've had Southern BBQ several times and am always so annoyed that the sauces are all on the side. I wish that they would just add them. The meat was pretty awful compared to the delicious homegrown grass fed pork that my brother-in-law smoked for us in Arkansas a few days later.
Standing in two places at the same time. Hubby had a knack for finding cool experiences and out of the way places for us to visit. This is the longest pedestrian bridge in the Eastern US and spans the Mississippi river. If you stand in the middle, you can be in Tennessee and Arkansas at the same time.
It was a mile each way across the bridge and every half hour they do a light show on the bridges. If you're standing on the pedestrian bridge, you can watch the light show happening on the highway bridge a little ways down river.
We stayed in a nice campground along the Mississippi that night and saw a lot of debris washed up on the banks as we explored the next morning. The river must have flooded last year or a couple of years ago.
The campground had these interesting and apparently dangerous high tree houses along the bank. One looked like it was falling apart (post flood) and this one looked like it was recently repaired.
Sunrise over the Mississippi.
They had some beautiful weeping willows at the campground.
This was not a "visiting" trip. It was hard for the kids to appreciate what I was trying to do on this trip. If you spend all your vacations visiting relatives, then you miss seeing the rest of our beautiful country. However, my sister's house was right along our route and a very convenient place to catch our breath from camping life. My other sister and family also recently moved nearby. These cousins have a lot in common and my kids were looking forward to this stop more than any of our other activities those first 2 weeks of the trip. They were counting down the days, in fact. :)
We had a great visit and celebrated brother S's birthday with a very exciting "store bought" cake and a shark shaped birthday candle.
These boys and girls! They loved spending time together. The boys are obsessed with bakugans and had lots of battles together.
My sister and I "hung out" in the way that I like best -- working on a project or two. We canned some big batches of apple sauce and apple pie filling. And with the scraps we made some apple cider vinegar. Our styles of canning have evolved differently since we did not grow up doing it together and it is fun to learn from each other's experiences.
After we left their house, we visited Cogar ghost town in Oklahoma. There wasn't much to it besides this cool abandoned gas station.
We heard some spooky sounds coming from the old gas station, but then realised it was just some goats living next door.
Spooky family picture.
Even more spooky for us was this dead scorpion, along with two others, that we saw in the girls bathroom at our campground. There was no cell service so we couldn't look anything up about local scorpions. We checked our sleeping bags carefully and said a prayer. Then everyone felt calm enough to go to sleep.
S celebrated his actual birthday by opening his card from Grandpop and Grandma Judy.
We camped at Wichita Mountain and visited the Wildlife trails first thing in the morning.
We didn't see any animals first hand, but spied a lot of different types of tracks in the mud.
We visited a Prairie Dog town and stumbled on to the site of an Easter pageant.
The scenery and backdrops were pretty amazing.
We saw some free ranging long horn cattle.
And more buffaloes:
We went to Quartz Mountain State Park the next morning and saw a lot of rock climbers on the cliff face.
We did a little hiking and climbing ourselves, but were very wary as the weather was unseasonably warm and this was rattlesnake country.
My heart almost stopped as Hubby and the kids were climbing ahead on some rocks and I heard a real RATTLE for the first time in my life. The rattler was down in a little gully about 10 feet from hubby. We quickly hustled off the rocks. EEeeek!
Lake Althus-Lugert abuts Quartz Mountain State Park. We really wished we could do some boating on the lake, but did not have the right equipment. We met a nice old local man out walking his part great pyrenees dog, who was very friendly. He chatted with us for a long while about the local area.
Baby A was incredibly pleased with his new gigantic sandbox.
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