most of the week while we were at her house lou had to go to bed much earlier than the rest of us because she had to get to work so early. travis, cyle, and i entertained ourselves with movies, books, chinese food, and visiting. on friday, however, lou took the day off so she could spend some time with us. she wanted to take us to the appalachian museum.
the museum is a collection of many settlers' old cabins and their former possessions, furniture, and tools. (mark twain's cabin from when he was a child even rests here!) the cabins have been purchased and moved to the museum to be preserved. there is also a huge building filled with old tools, guns, and artifacts. it's incredibly interesting.
john rice irwin, the creator of the museum says, "Scratching through the discards of Granny’s kitchen, I uncovered one small item which simply brought tears to my eyes. It was a tin spice grater. From my earliest recollections, it had hung on Granny’s kitchen cabinet. In this grater Granny kept her aromatic smelling nutmeg, which she used for making pies. . . . A thousand times I had watched her lift the little lid and grab a nutmeg seed and rub it over the perforated grater to shave off enough of the surface for her pie. Here it was, the conveyer of so many pleasant memories for me, and now it was a mere rusty trinket that wouldn’t bring $2.00 at a flea market. It was only natural that I should want to preserve some of these antiques, whose history and background I knew. . . . I began to think about how important it was to preserve these items, and the memorabilia of all the people who represented a passing culture."
(mark twain's cabin)
the entire museum is a preservation of the history of the appalachian's earliest settlers. it is a living museum, and was filled with so many wonderful artifacts and stories. unfortunately, it was one of the coolest days that we spent on vacation and i didn't have a jacket. i also wasn't feeling well, which is evident in the pictures from the day. i never would have dreamed how much fun we would have tucked away in the smokey mountains. it's not a vacation i would normally plan, but i enjoyed it thoroughly.
after our night at the museum, we headed back to lou's where she cooked roast and stayed up visiting with us. she asked about the wedding and kept telling us that we're so quiet. i tried to convince her that we are off-the-wall crazy and act goofy more than anything, but i don't think i was able to convince her. i was sad because i knew our vacation was quickly drawing to a close. i was enjoying being away from anything dramatic and it even felt nice to not have to be responsible. we stayed up late again to watch movies with cyle and spend as much time with him before we headed back to the south/midwest.
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