18th Wedding Anniversary

Troy wasn't sure if he wanted to go to Arkansas to give diamond mining a try or to North Carolina to give sapphire mining a try. Although Abigail insisted that she could be "in-charge" at home while they were away Ann and Troy decided that was not an acceptable solution so they took the girls along for the trip.

We traveled to Nashville late on Wednesday night and used up some of the hotel points Troy has accumulated during his travels. Troy had back spasms the next morning and we traveled across Tennessee. We were trying to get a hotel room for the weekend but while we were looking at different options all the hotels and cabins in the area we were looking at filled up. Troy was able to use his Diamond status to secure a set-aside room for the weekend. We toured a cave and as we were headed toward Ashville, NC we passed the Bush Baked beans factory. The factory was closed but we took a few pictures.

The cave was interesting and it had some neat features.

We stayed very close to the Biltmore house and enjoyed our hotel room with an in-room hot tub. On the downside the room didn't have a sleeper in the sofa so the girls slept in the chairs. Abigail was too tall for her chair and stretched out on the floor.

Ann is trying out the "chair bed" where Elizabeth slept. The girls enjoyed the hot tub in the room. Abigail is bundled up on the couch. We had a nice view from our room.

Troy's back was really hurting so he went to the urgent care center. We had some really good pizza and then headed back into the mountains to look at some waterfalls. We hiked up a couple of trails and saw some interesting scenery there as well as the roads through the Smoky Mountain National Park. We made it to our hotel and it was very nice. It even had a fireplace.

The girls liked this trail that was depressed between the mountain side and the elevated side of the trail. There were several nice waterfalls and we had to get close to the water. The girls like the tunnels we drove through.

We stopped along a creek and took some pictures.

We took a few pictures around this water fall.

We were there just in time to catch the last of the fall colors.

On the way to the sapphire mine we went back through the park and stopped at the top for a few more pictures. The trees going down the other side were pretty too.

We did finally make it to sapphire mine. Here we are at the sluice rinsing dirt and sand out of our screens.

At this mine we dug our own dirt. We found a few sapphires in most everyplace that we dug dirt to work.

We did find some sapphires but no so many that we took up mining full time...

After a day at the sapphire mine we headed to Ooltewah and stayed there overnight. We headed over to the church where we were married 18 years ago to the day. The girls took this picture of us. We headed home and had lunch with Iris.

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