Day 2

October 13 2009 Tuesday

Woke up at 8am, had breakfast and headed out. Aunt Stella went to work way before we were awake and Uncle Isaac was still asleep. The original plan was to have lunch in Chattanooga with Tim’s friends, but he couldn’t get a hold of them so we kept going. Georgia is beautiful, the weather is perfect, and the trees are just starting to show their fall colors – yellows and oranges with a few reds. Most of them are still green though. We are in the Smoky Mountains. Drove through Chattanooga into Tennessee then went to the Ruby Falls park. It’s a cavern with the nation’s tallest underground waterfall. (That’s accessible to the public.) Spectacular! We took a detour off the highway to Look Out Mountain to find the cavern entrance. The GPS lady yelled at us the entire time. “As soon as possible make a u-turn. You’re going the wrong way! Why won’t you follow my instructions! In .2 miles turn right, then make a u-turn – Recalculating!” Good thing the GPS is just a computer not a real person or it would have called us idiots. But then a real person would figure out we are taking a detour. If we were smart we would have just turned off the GPS instead of listening to it recalculate the entire way up the mountain.
I took some video of the falls, it was gorgeous. The water sparkles as it falls down and they had it all lit up with rainbow lights. We had to take an elevator 1000ft underground to get to the caves. I am almost out of video memory we need to buy more film. (The current dvd thing also has Disney on it, so there wasn’t much left.) We had a picnic lunch in the mountains. I love the scenery – very beautiful. Forest covered mountains in the background behind a blue haze. Some are shrouded in clouds and mist. There are lots of rounded tops and curvy hills. The mountains are covered in greenery with patches of yellow-green and orange. The highways are dotted with brilliant pink flowers. (phlox – which Mom says is a good scrabble word) The air is crisp and clear. The sun is still shining and the sky is lined with silver clouds.
The interstate is full of trucks – they seem to travel in groups. Packs of 6-8. The road is very curvy, but at least they kept it fairly level by cutting into the sides of mountains instead crossing over the top. It was a long boring drive the rest of the way to Paducah. I usually drive in the morning and evenings, mom does the afternoon driving. We finally made it, and are now in another time zone. I had to reset my car clock twice already. Once on the way to Georgia, we realized it was an hour off. (Probably from the last daylight savings change.) Then we switched time zones so I had to reset a second time. We are in central time now. I texted Laura on the drive to entertain myself. In Paducah we had dinner at a buffet place Tim recommended. It was ok, but not that great. I certainly did not eat $9 worth of food. We went to walmart and bought some food and more dvd tape things and colorful shoelaces for my shoes. Tim’s dogs fought over their bones.