fireflies and doc's 321 cafe

From one small town to another, we made it home last night. Fortunately the drive home was much easier and faster than the drive there. 

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Obviously this is not my picture. It is very hard to get a firefly picture from a phone. We didn't see the synchronized fireflies from the national park because we got an even more personal view. The first night I went to bed around 11, but Peppy stayed up later and told me the next day that you could actually see the fireflies from our patio. So we got to sit here each night....

and look down onto this.......

And fireflies were everywhere. Peppy told me it was like at the end of a concert when lights are constantly going off and I thought he had to be exaggerating. Nope. When I stayed up that second night it felt like we were in an amphitheater and cameras were constantly flashing. On the last night the sky cleared up a bit and you could see the stars and the fireflies, so that was nice. I kept hoping to see a UFO, but with the fireflies and five bears, I mean, can I really ask for more?

On the way out we stopped at this local restaurant that was recommended to us by our zipline guides, Doc's 321 Cafe. It was a really quirky place where you got to eat in one of two converted school busses with hippie memorabilia everywhere. They had only just opened when we got there and weren't busy yet, so Doc showed us all around the place. He gave us a tour and told us the history of how he got the busses and collected all his decor. It was really a neat experience. The whole place just had good, happy vibes about it.

  

This wooden 'decoration' is actually from the original Woodstock. He had a few of them. Doc said people were just sitting around making stuff to have something to do, and people would either give them to him or he would buy them from the people making them. 

I had the Jerry Garcia, which was their homemade chicken salad on rye with a side of the best potato salad I have ever had in my life. Peppy had smoked chicken tacos that he said were great, and we shared a piece of smoked pecan pie which was really interesting, but also very good. 

We walked some trails and ate at a couple restaurants, but due to the weather, ziplining ended up being our only big event. That was ok though. There was a dance convention going on at the convention center in Gatlinburg and it was incredibly crowded in the downtown area. The two times we drove down the strip we were happy to be headed back towards our treehouse of tranquility. Cosby, Tennessee is a tiny town within easy driving distance to not only Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, but it is also right on the North Carolina border and Asheville is only about an hour away. And it is right at the Foothills entrance to the Smokey's. You could easily stay in Cosby and find unique stores to browse and local mom and pops to eat at. You don't even have to go into the touristy area at all.

The kids don't get back home until tomorrow, so this is like a holiday for me. They have been having a blast this week too. I don't think I've ever been a week without my kids before, and having a whole day to rest up before they come back home feels like the cherry on top. It also gives me time to catch up on our pile of laundry before I have to start on the kids stuff. Last night when we got home I put our stuff away and started a load of clothes, laid down on the couch and was gone for the night. And this was at like 6 pm.

I brought my laptop with me, but Peppy ended up having to use it for work because he forgot the cable to his laptop, so I haven't really been following the news much. I have been seeing stuff about the Titanic submarine, and there are a lot of suspicious things about that, like one of the guys was this nuclear genius and a member of the World Economic Forum, and most of them were billionaires. And it was yet another Simpson's prediction from 1998. R/conspiracy is going crazy with theories this morning.