Over the River and Through the Woods
Summer is an interesting time for me. There are three very different types of weeks for me during the summer:
- Weeks where the girls are with their mom, and I work all week.
- Weeks where the girls are with me, and I take the week off work.
- Weeks where the girls are with me, and I work all week.
That third type of week is the toughest. Get up early and get everyone ready for the day. Get the girls to camp by 9. Go work for six or seven hours. Pick the girls up from camp. Head home, take showers (since camp involves a lot of pool time), have dinner. Spend a bit of quality time with the girls. Go to bed. Repeat the next day.
The first time I had a week like this, two summers ago, I was completely exhausted every single day. This summer, however, I think I weathered the week (earlier in June) pretty well. Perhaps my stamina has increased. Perhaps I’ve just lowered my expectations for “me time” during this week.
Last week was a week of the second type. I took the week off work, and the girls and I had a fun trip visiting my mom in South Carolina. I took a different approach to the eight-hour drive this time around. Instead of driving straight through (or as straight through as possible given the very small bladders of my two little girls), I decided that we would make a few stops along the way, turning the drive into a more proper road trip. This turned out to be a great decision–with one notable exception.
Miraculously, we were out of the house and on the road just after nine. I credit the new suitcases I bought the girls the day before. They were packed before dinner the night before. Hannah actually did a great job packing–I only needed to add a couple of extra outfits to her suitcase. She had plenty of outfits, but not quite enough matching outfits. Lily’s suitcase needed a bit more work, as you might imagine.
Rest Stop #1 – Burgess Falls
Our first stop along the way to Grandma’s house was at Burgess Falls State Park. I visited Burgess Falls a couple of years ago in the fall, and I knew it had a pretty easy walking trail down to a few waterfalls. When we arrived, the girls were happy to be out of the car, even though we had only been on the road for just over an hour. I had forgotten that the park had a playground area, but this feature did not escape Lily’s notice. We played a bit there, and then started down the path to the falls.
It’s only about a half mile to the overlook near the Big Falls, but that was probably a quarter mile too much for Hannah. She wasn’t in the mood for nature, but we soldiered on and got a good look at the Big Falls from above. Two years ago I hiked down to the bottom of the waterfall–it’s really amazing from below–but I knew that wasn’t happening with the girls. In spite of the grumbling, this was a pretty relaxing rest stop.
Rest Stop #2 – The Minister’s Tree House
Just the week before, I had read about the Minister’s Tree House on the Flickr blog. I saw the photos of this amazing 100-foot-tall structure, then just about fell out of my chair when I read that it was located in Crossville, Tennessee, just two hours east of home. I couldn’t believe that I had never heard of this roadside attraction, despite having lived in Nashville for twelve years. I knew we had to see it in person during our trip to South Carolina. I was not disappointed.
Back in the 1990s, landscaper Horace Burgess felt a call from God to create the world’s largest tree house. Roadside America quotes Mr. Burgess as saying, “And the spirit of God said, ‘If you build Me a tree house, I’ll never let you run out of material.'” I don’t know if anyone has verified it as the world’s largest, but it’s certainly an impressive tree house. It wraps around seven trees, features multiple levels and balconies, and is probably some kind of safety hazard. It’s definitely a “climb at your own risk” kind of structure.
There’s even a church / basketball court in the middle of the thing:
And if you look down from the crow’s nest at the top of the tree house, you can see the word “Jesus” plainly spelled out in the garden below:
There’s a 50-foot rope swing with a lawn chair attached. And some cute bunnies in a cage on display in front of the tree house. And a couple of good ole boys manning a table with souvenir t-shirts for sale. I didn’t pick up a t-shirt, but I did leave a few bucks in the donation box. It’s amazing what one guy on a mission has built.
Seriously, if you’re anywhere near Crossville, visit this tree house.
Rest Stop #3 – The Blue Ridge Parkway
With the two hours we spent at Burgess Falls, the hour we spent at the giant tree house, and the assorted time we spent visiting bathrooms across Eastern Tennessee, we hit North Carolina a bit later than I had hoped. But with the late summer sunsets, I figured the Blue Ridge Parkway might still offer some pretty spectacular views. I had never driven the Parkway, but a friend of mine gave it rave reviews on Facebook, so I plotted a route that included a piece of it. (Yes, I crowdsourced my road trip by asking my Facebook friends for suggested stops along the way.)
The thing about the Blue Ridge Parkway, or at least the small portion of it that we covered, is that there are no restrooms. I knew there wouldn’t be any gas stations or restaurants on the Parkway, so I made sure to make a stop before we got on to fill up the tank and let the little ones empty their tanks. However, about ten minutes after we got on the Parkway, Hannah let me know that she had to pee again. This posed a problem, mainly because the views were so spectacular that I wanted to pull over every quarter-mile and take photos. As we drove along, with me making faster and faster photo stops, it became clear that, although the Parkway has lots of places to stop for scenic overlooks, it has no restrooms.
After getting a great shot (above) at the highest point of the Parkway (6053 feet above sea level!), I put the camera away and drove as fast as I safely could, hoping to find a restroom before we had any accidents. About fifteen minutes later, I had to choose between staying on the Parkway (which would put us back on the interstate near Asheville within half an hour) or exiting the Parkway and heading south along a state road. I figured chances of finding a bathroom had to be better on the state road, so we said goodbye to the Parkway–and hello to one of the most winding country roads I’ve ever traveled.
Not a Rest Stop
It took a good fifteen more minutes to find a restroom–an outhouse at a very tiny campground off the side of the road. With that particular crisis averted, I decided to press on southward because when you’re in North Carolina, south is the direction to go if you want to end up in South Carolina. However, it turned out we were pretty far from any interstate. We spent the next hour twisting and turning along curvy country roads, blindly following my phone’s GPS (which we’ve named Judy), hoping for a straightaway.
At one point in this portion of the journey, just after nightfall, I heard Lily say from the backseat, “Daddy, I think I’m gonna throw up.” I’ve learned that when Hannah says something like that, there’s only a 5% chance that vomit will ensue. However, when Lily says she’s going to throw up, you’ve got about 12 seconds to get a bucket of some sort in front of her face. I didn’t make it in time, so I spent the next ten minutes parked in someone’s driveway, in the dark, cleaning things up.
Aren’t road trips the best?
Judy (the GPS) finally led us to a four-lane road, which led to Pickens, South Carolina, and then to Greenville, SC, my old college stomping grounds. Two hours later we were pulling into Grandma’s house, with both girls sound asleep.
All told, it took about 14 hours to drive what’s usually a nine-hour trip. We spent three of those extra five hours having fun with waterfalls and giant tree houses. Those other two hours? We got to see far more of North Carolina than we wanted.
The rest of the trip, including three days at Grandma’s and the drive back to Nashville, was full of fun. More on that in a future post!