Ruby Falls

So the next day we got up and we didn't stop driving til we made it to TN. On the way we saw about a million sigs that said "Ruby Falls" so we decided to check it out. We went deep down inside a mountain into caves where there's a huge underground waterfall. It was cool. There were a lot of weird formations all over the place like this one Julian is standing by:

Dunn's Falls

Saturday we took off for a vacation to Tennessee. We decided to camp out in Meridian, MS...right before we got there, we saw a sign for Dunn's Falls. I love water falls, so we decided to check it out. This placed turned out to be a little piece of American history. It was a working grist mill in the 1800's We were even able to go inside and explore...there were so many cool old tools inside.
There were a lot of people tubing and playing in the creek below.

We decided to take a walk down the nature trail while we were there. It was very pretty. Look at that. I love history.

new park

A dragon made of tires!!!! We all tried this. It's not easy!!! I used to kick butt on that when I was a kid. Now I just land on my butt.

They just built a new park in our town. It's awesome. We had to go check it out. I don't know who had more fun playing- me and Josh or Julian and Emily. LOL

CUSTARD

Keli took this picture. I LOVE IT. there's a place we simply HAVE to go every time we're at the camp- that's the frozen custard stand. It is so DIVINELY delicious. See me on the left in the blue T-shirt? I don't even notice that someone is taking a picture because I am so intent on my cone, LOL. My Mom's face is the BEST!!! She's the one in the camo shorts. How many Grammas are that AWESOME???? (((and you have to say the word awesome in a high pitched voice for emphasis, by the way. read that sentence again the right way)))And there's pretty Christy in her tie dye. She is too cool.

snakes at the creek

So yeah, we were down at the creek and we saw 2 snakes. I do not like snakes but we have become a lot more accepting of them lately. Hey, as long as they stay away from us, we will allow them to live. Here Emily was trying to catch minnows with that bag. LOL... She has been begging me for a pet fish so last night I went to Walmart and bought one of those pretty little red bettas. She loves it. Here's Julian with a boogie board. he loves to ride it down stream.
Julian and his friend had a blast at the creek, that's for sure. Running from snakes is a grand adventure for them. The first one we saw was really small and brown. It got carried down stream so I wasn't worried about it. They can't swim against that current...
but then later we saw another one on the rocks of the dam. It was orange and white patterned. YUCK. It came out and stood up, looking around at us. I was like "Okay time to go!"
Then these 3 teenager boys decided to try to kill it by throwing huge stones at it. But I never saw the actual body so I think it got away. I was OUTTA there.

PINK robes and RED Bluff

SO one night my dad brought Josh, my brother Cori, and my sister's husband Randy out to Red Bluff and they had decided that they were going to jump off the cliff, slide down the bluff to the bottom, walk the creek to the river (Pearl River) and SWIM to the camp....
4 hours later Carrie and I took off to go find them and got the whole story.....
there was basically no current in the river that night so it was slow going. after about 3 hours of swimming in the river, a guy in a boat offered to give them a ride...his boat broke down and they had to use their boogie boards as oars to get to the guy's house.
they got in the back of his truck and he was bringing them home when carrie and i passed them on the road.
cori and josh had no extra clothes, since they hadn't planned on swimming in their clothes...so they ended up wearing those pink robes til their clothes got washed.
of course this was a Kodak moment!!!
there's a glimpse of the bluff, with emily and julian posing. i'll post some better pictures if i can find any.

catfish

yeah! keli posted some cool pictures so i snagged them. these were taken the night we caught catfish on the trot line. the top one is me and the bottom one is my big sis keli. i love her so much. she looks so pretty in this picture.it was so much fun, i will never forget that night. as you can see, i had a little light hanging around my neck- that light was strapped to my forehead so we could see the line as we were checking the hooks at about 10pm in the pitch dark. the funniest part was that my dad parked on the shore and shined his headlights at us, which attracted every gnat in the state of mississippi. we were SWARMED. keli and i were laughing so hard and choking on the bugs at the same time, which made us laugh even harder.