Saturday, October 31, 2020
Halloween 1970: Fifty Years Ago
Monday, October 19, 2020
Thursday, October 15, 2020
Once More to the Great Smoky Mountains
Today I took advantage of the fact that Anna's off work for her Fall Break to go out for an all-day adventure on one of my favorite drives: up U.S. 441, through north Georgia, into North Carolina, through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and on to Pigeon Forge, TN--and then back home again.
In one day.
I left this morning at about 9:20 and didn't get home until fourteen hours later*; frankly I wish I'd stopped at the NC/TN border--Newfound Gap in the GSMNP--and then headed back home. Three-hundred and eighty miles is a little too much for a one-day round trip (especially when I don't head out in the morning until over an hour after I'd intended too).
But still, I had a great time, and I took lots of pictures. Here are the ones I texted to Anna and the girls as I went:

(Tallulah Point Overlook, a place I always look forward to stopping at, has moved. I didn't see its new location.)

(This was at that big year-round Christmas place in Pigeon Forge. Since Elyse collects cardinals, I thought she'd like it. (The picture, I mean; I didn't buy it.))
* If you compared that timeline with the time stamp on this post, you'd have to conclude that my arrival home is still in the future. I'm actually creating this post the next day, on Friday; it's actually "yesterday" I'm describing, rather than "today." Don't tell anyone.
Monday, October 12, 2020
The Greenville Zoo with Mommy and Elyse
Today, Anna and Elyse drove 125 miles northeast to go to the Greenville Zoo--Elyse was just desperate to go somewhere and do something, and a zoo is a fun and relatively safe outdoor place to be, and Anna was excited about going to a new zoo. (Jessica didn't want to go and it seemed contrary to the spirit of such an adventure to force her to participate, so she and I stayed home.)
They did have a good time on their adventure, in spite of the fact that the amount of time it took to go through the whole zoo and see everything was less than half the time it took to just to get there. (That sounds like a word problem, so I'll put it more plainly: they drove two-and-a-half hours for an hour's walk through the zoo. But they enjoyed it, so it was worth it.) (Frankly we're a little spoiled, living fairly close to a great zoo like Zoo Atlanta, but that doesn't mean we can't appreciate other zoos.)
Here are some of the pictures they texted me throughout the day, starting with one from a McDonald's where they stopped for breakfast:
Friday, October 9, 2020
The Gwinnett Environmental and Heritage Center with Jessica
Today Jessica and I went to the Gwinnett Environmental and Heritage Center to walk around and take pictures. I've been there a couple of times before, but this was the first time I've been there when the visitor's center was open (it was closed for a few months because of the pandemic):
We were fortunate enough to be allowed inside the center's Chesser-Williams House, an 1850's house that was donated to Gwinnett County Parks a few years ago, moved to the Gwinnett Environmental and Heritage Center, and restored:
Before we left the center, Jessica sat down to take a picture of the sky (and to rest, I think):