Just Keepin N Touch: November 2020

My Favorite Time of Year at Dollywood

Mom and Milton waiting to go into the Pines Theater for the Kingdom Heirs Christmas show

Sitting in every other row, and with 3 seats between groups made for a less than half capacity Pines Theater. They usher you out of the shows now to keep the social distancing going on. As a result, we missed the next show we'd hoped to attend when coming out of the DP Celebrity Theater. They fill up fast since they're limiting the number who can attend.

The weather sure was glorious for our visit, in the 60's and sunny.

My favorite show once again - Christmas in the Smokies. Love the music!

O' Holy Night - another great program. The singer/guitarist was excellent.

Appalachian Christmas was great music too, as always, even though their bass player was missing.

Who dat?

Notice the hanging "candles" around the chapel? The 8 carolers who sang carols on the chapel steps were excellent.

Nobody knew us being all covered up when it got cold after sundown!

Old Stone Fort State Archaeological Park, Nov. 12-15

We camped 3 nights this past weekend in Manchester, TN (90 miles from home) at Old Stone Ft. SP for our first time. We had perfect fall weather.

The bridge that was recently closed to traffic in the park

This native American mound site is where they held events for marriages or deaths, but they didn't actually live at this location.

Didn't much care for this steep trail full of roots and rocks, and not level - never again!

Another nice falls view from the trail

in the museum in an Indian dwelling

Our site had no back-door neighbors - just woods. The campground itself wasn't anything to "write home about." But we loved the hiking scenery along the Duck River.

Where in the blue blazes are we? That expression took on new meaning when we got lost in the woods on a trail that got away from us - and we didn't see any blue blazes for some time! Then it happened again on a green blaze trail - we gave up on finding it and took to the road that we knew would take us to the campground. The leaves made seeing any trail impossible.

Breetzkes joined us on the weekend. What fun!

The steep part of Moat trail - up, up and away from the river.

They got their new No Boundaries trailer this summer and have made good use of it.

Glorious Gibbs Gardens!

Sabbath we drove the 90 miles to Ball Ground, GA to visit Gibbs Gardens for our second time. The fall colors along the way were amazing! The Waterlily Gardens greet you as you first enter the gardens.

The fall colors in the Japanese maples were spectacular!

This beauty is in the lower center of the picture below.

It looks like a pile of spaghetti was plopped down in the middle of this one. ;)

in the Grandchildren's Sculpture Garden

Nice reflection of this one

Impatience were still blooming, though some further away in the picture had been frost nipped.

The Manor House where the Gibbs family live with winter pansies all planted now

Our next visit will be in the spring when the daffodils are in bloom. They are open till Dec. 6. When we asked when they re-open in the spring, they said "When Mr. Gibbs sees it's time." So it varies some from year to year apparently. We'll be watching for the email notification come February/March. Maybe we can camp at Bald Ridge Creek in Cumming which is only a half hour from here when we go next time but they don't open till March 25.

To see more about this little heaven on earth, go to https://www.gibbsgardens.com

A friend of ours, Shawnda Friesen, was there too on Sabbath. She posted some of her spectacular pictures yesterday on FB and I'll share some of my favorites of angles or places we didn't get pictures of. She has a very "adequate" camera as the quality of her pictures shows. And she's so good at composing her pictures. I told her she should open a business!