I was thinking about the month of March. It’s hard to believe it has ended for another year. March came in like the proverbial Lion. The weather was terrible the wind was so strong it blew our outside furniture all over the deck. We had tree limbs down and lost power one night for about six hours. We had a hail storm that left our deck littered with hail so thick it looked like snow. And then it, March, went out like a little meek lamb. Goodbye March. Until next year.
March was a full month of work and reading, knitting and crochet projects, dinners with family and then with some friends, I was the guest speaker at a hospitality training seminar, my husband retired and is loving it, I was able to visit with my niece who was in for a time from California, I visited a farm that grows tulips, my tulips are blooming and several of my orchids are blooming. So wow!!! Quite a month. I would expect no less I guess.
The Reduds are also blooming. At work we have several visitors who come in and ask “what are the beautiful purple trees that we see all along the roads.” I tell them they are actually Redbuds. Redbuds? but they’re purple, and then I show them the picture of a Redbud when it first blooms out and it is definitely a red bud.
See how red the first bloom actually is?
I passed a house that had this beautiful tree blooming and just had to get a picture.
And of course just like clock work we experienced Redbud Winter. The temperatures took a plunge last week which is always what happens when the Redbuds bloom. I truly believe in all the winters that we experience in East Tennessee. If you haven’t read my post explaining them you can read it here: The Five Winters of East Tennessee. Many people I work with, even my husband, poo poo this and don’t believe that the trees budding, and other signs have anything to do with the weather, but I firmly believe they do. My parents always believed this and so did early settlers, for them it was the only way they had of knowing when the last frost had occurred and it was safe to plant crops.
A few weeks ago I became obsessed with the crocheted Easter eggs that are all over the internet. I spent several hours watching a YouTube video while working stitch by stitch with a yarn, turns out was much too thick, to make one of these eggs. You crochet one side and then the other side separately and then slip a small plastic Easter egg inside and slip stitch the two sides together. My first one turned out so large, because of the thick yarn I was using, you could have put three Easter eggs inside of it. Back to my computer and YouTube I went. The second egg wound up on the floor because I got so frustrated, I may have actually yelled and stomped a little, with the yarn. I had picked a thinner cotton yarn. Wrong. The cotton just didn’t work. It kept splitting and it was still too thick. For round three I chose crochet thread, it is super fine. I am using a size 2.75 crochet needle. I finished it and I think I sort of like it. I would like to make a few more and hang them across my kitchen window.
The third attempt. I think I am better off sticking with the crochet thread. I hung this one in my window and would like a few more. Maybe I will get better with each one.
If you want to try one of these eggs, just put crocheted Easter egg inside your search bar and lots of them will come up.
So here we are in April. The weather has been so nice and soft. The trees are turning about a million shades of green. Flowers are blooming, and the pollen is going crazy!!! I guess you just have to take some of the bad with the good.
I just returned from a short trip to Lake Lure North Carolina. I went there for an attractions meeting. I mentioned before that I work in Tourism and attend these meetings three times a year. The meetings are held at a different place each time. This time we met at Lake Lure and the beautiful Chimney Rock State Park. I was there Sunday through Wednesday. This post will be about staying at the Lake Lure Inn & Spa. I will have other posts about different parts of my stay in this beautiful part of the country.
I left on Sunday. I knew I had about a four hour drive ahead of me. I was off work on Saturday and did all of the usual weekend things that needed to be done, buying groceries, laundry and cleaning the house etc etc. I don’t know about you but I have to have a clean house before I leave. Fortunately my husband was home most of the time with the kitty babies.
Before I left on Sunday I had a quick lunch with my nephew and my sister and niece at a small restaurant in town. It was so good to catch up. Now that my nephew has moved over two hours away I don’t get to see him a lot.
Oh the weather was beautiful on Sunday. The temps were in the mid 70’s F and there was a slight breeze blowing. You could feel fall in the air. I had a very uneventful drive and I even saw some leaves falling along the road. The traffic was a little heavy for a Sunday but I made really good time. I listened to an audio book most of the drive. Sometimes those make me sleepy so I had to switch to music.
I checked into the Inn. We stayed at the Lake Lure Inn and Spa. This Inn, which is on the historic register, was built in 1927. The lobby area is absolutely beautiful with lots of antiques and beautiful furniture. Lots of famous people, even Presidents have stayed at this hotel. This area is also where some of the movie Dirty Dancing was filmed and both Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey stayed at the Inn while filming the movie. None of the movie was actually filmed at the Inn but parts of Lake Lure was used in the famous Baby and Johnny dance practice in the lake. More on that in the next post.
After checking in I went to my room. I had been given an old fashioned key on a huge plastic key chain. The doors still had actual locks. I would like to say the room was beautiful and stylish but it was old and somewhat musty. I understand that a 1927 Inn is going to have some challenges but I could lie on the bed and touch the door. I do know that some of the rooms at the Inn are quite luxurious. My room was very small with a huge king sized bed in the middle, the bed was actually quite heavenly and took up almost the entire room. Fortunately on these trips we do not spend a lot of time in our rooms .I will tell you that bed felt wonderful at the end of our long days of meetings and visiting area attractions. I sank blissfully into it at the end of each day.
After getting settled I went downstairs to find some dinner. The hotel had a nice little restaurant and the food was delicious. A lot of our crew was not arriving until the next day so the hotel was a bit quiet.
Our meeting didn’t start until noon the following day so I slept in and had coffee in my room. I had a quick breakfast downstairs and did a long walk around the lake and property. Again the weather was picture perfect. The Inn also had this huge porch with rocking chairs it was the perfect place to sit and relax.
You can close your eyes and imagine the town during the summer. Lots of families hanging out and swimming and eating ice cream. I’m sure the town is really hopping during the summer months. I can almost hear children yelling and running into the water. It would be such a fun place to be with the little beach area and small mom and pop restaurants. All of these areas are within walking distance of the Inn. Most of them have closed for the season.
After my walk I headed back to the Inn to get ready for my meeting. It was a great way to start the day.
Hello friends and happy Monday. I recently returned from a week long trip to Las Vegas, for the Star Trek Convention, and Utah, to see Zion National Park.
I have many more posts to come to share all of our experiences with you but for now I just wanted to catch up a bit and ask you a question about what kind of traveler you are. But first:
Let’s go back to Tuesday of last week, actually week before last, the day before we left on our vacation. I had to work all day so it didn’t leave me a lot of time to pack and get things organized. I always feel like I have a million things to do before I leave when in reality I only have about half of that. But somehow, as it always does, it worked out. Clothes were packed, arrangements for the babies, were made. My sweet nephew comes in and feeds them and makes sure they have water and cleans out kitty boxes. He is a gem. Airport check in for our flights was done on our phones the day before so we would be ready when we got to the airport. And then:
Tuesday evening we had really bad thunderstorms in our area. My nephew, yes the same one who takes care of the kitties, lost power for several hours and came to borrow our generator. Sadie was being a little scaredy cat, literally, and was hiding outside and wouldn’t come in. I knew I couldn’t leave for a week with her stuck outside. I was frantically packing so that we could leave the next morning at 4:30 AM to get to the airport in time for our 7:00 AM flight. We were thinking how lucky we were we hadn’t lost power. Also, after a while Sadie finally came in. Things were coming together and I was finally starting to relax. At 10:00 PM I was finishing some last minute things before bed and our power flickered and went out. It didn’t come back until 2:30 AM. Just thirty minutes before we had our clocks set to get up to get ready to leave for the airport. Because we are on a well system. No power means no water. No water no showers. Needless to say I was so worried we weren’t going to get our electricity back on before we left, I didn’t sleep all night. But we got power back on, showers and COFFEE all before leaving at 4:30 AM
Wednesday: We made it to the airport on time. Every time I go on a trip something at the airport has changed. Either you have a different way of checking in or something at security has changed. It’s always different. We got our bags checked and had a safe flight to Chicago and then on to Vegas. I can’t tell you much about the flights because I slept through both of them. But all were on time and no problems so that was good.
We got a taxi to the hotel. Luckily we were staying at the hotel where the convention was being held. It was a toasty 107 degrees F when we arrived in Vegas. But it’s a dry heat everyone says. I don’t care it’s still hot!!!! Because of the convention it took a few minutes, more like an hour, to get checked in. By this time we were exhausted. We made it to our room, It was on the 39th floor, and took a quick break.
We decided to go down and get signed in for the convention. A line had started forming through the hotel by the time we made it to the convention center. Luckily we got through that pretty easy. My husband had pre-ordered the tickets and gotten us top tier tickets so we were ushered through a different line. As far as I could tell this was the only advantage to paying several hundred extra dollars for the tickets. Oh wait!!! we did get an ink pen. Right.
Thursdayand Friday: The convention started in full swing Thursday morning. After a quick breakfast, well we had to wait for thirty minutes for a table, and a gulping $75.00 breakfast bill, we were headed to the Vendor room. This is where actors of all the Star Trek shows, Star Trek, Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager etc. gather and sign autographs and will allow you to get your picture taken with them. For a fee of course. A fee of about $100.00 per person. My husband wanted several pictures. I am a huge Star Trek fan as well, but to me this seemed crazy!!! Some of the stars we met were nicer than others and didn’t price gauge. Barbara Luna was just a jewel and so friendly. We loved every second with her.
Barbara Luna was a doll. She starred in many of the Original Series episodes and in a lot of westerns.
Also Billy Clark who played the Gorn in the Original series was a sweetheart. He signed autographs and posed for all the pictures you wanted, for a nominal fee.
This man was the Gorn on the original Star Trek episode, Arena. He was so sweet and talked with us for a long time.
We hadn’t been to a Star Trek Convention in several years. I knew the cost of things had gone up. I tried to keep an open mind about everything but I was just so surprised by the cost of food and experiences.
Saturday: We decided to visit the Los Vegas Sphere. I knew this could be a once in a lifetime experience. You can see the Sphere from the plane when you arrive in Vegas. We went on a Saturday. The Sphere took five years to construct it opened in September of 2023. It is 366 feet high and 516 feet wide, spanning a total of 875,000 feet. It is a screen that envelopes you in 270 degrees of visuals while filling your ears with immersive sound. Imagine you feel the wind off a mountain top or the vibration of the earth as an enormous elephant walks by. It was breath taking. I’ll have more on that next week.
Sunday: After four days at the convention, and visiting a couple of other things, we got an Uber to the Car Rental place and picked up our rental car and headed to Utah to visit Zion National Park. When the Uber dropped us off at the car rental I almost didn’t get out of the Uber. Even the driver looked skeptical. Is this an actual business he asked. I checked my confirmation and yes this was the address. It looked like a camper, that was the office, with several cars around it, those were the rental cars. We lugged our suitcases up a metal ramp that looked questionable. We entered the little camper trailer office. Only one person was on duty and there was a line of people waiting. Luckily we had checked in online so our process went fairly fast. We were told that since we were taking the car into another state we would have to pay an extra $20.00 a day. We were planning to be in Utah for three days before returning to Vegas. I had also purchased the extra insurance and they couldn’t pull it up even though I showed them the policy number. They charged me again for that and told me to take it up with the online company when I returned home. Fortunately that charge came off the next day. They must have found the policy. Not sure.
We finally got our car after about an hour. We headed out of Vegas and hit I-15 north to Utah. The drive was about three hours. It was a beautiful drive. It seemed like leaving the city behind and entering the wide open desert immediately calmed our souls.
We arrived in Zion National Park late in the afternoon. We explored the little town of Springdale and got some food. We had an early night. We wanted to get into the park early the next morning before it got too hot.
Monday- Tuesday: We took a shuttle to the Visitor Center and then took another shuttle to get into Zion National Park. During the summer months cars are not allowed on the park roads. You have to take a shuttle. The shuttle system is fabulous. The shuttles have about six stops along the canyon route. You can choose which stop or stops you want to take. Each stop leads to a different hike. As I said we got in and out each day before it got too hot. I can’t even describe how beautiful it was. I took a ton of pictures and I will show you lots of them in a separate post but here are a couple.
That’s my husband. You can get an idea of just how big the rocks in the canyon are.
Tuesday Evening: we left Zion to head back to Vegas to fly out the next morning. Again it was about a three hour drive. We thought about driving up to Salt Lake City and flying out but that would have been about an eight hour drive. we returned the rental car and got a ride back to the hotel. We had such an early morning flight we didn’t want to have to worry about returning the car the same morning.
Wednesday: We left our hotel at 3:45AM to head home. We got an Uber to the airport. All of our Uber drivers were awesome. Our flight was at 6:00 AM. I thought we were getting to the airport a bit early but no. The lines were crazy. Again we had checked in for our flight online the day before. But it was still crazy. The lines were long and not a lot of instruction about what to do. I worried that we were the only ones feeling confused but no lots of people were shaking their heads about where to go next. So confusing. Like I said before, every time is a little different.
We finally arrived home late Wednesday and I have never been so glad to see all of the kitties. I guess, as I have gotten older, travel gives me a bit of anxiety. It’s not just the traveling part of it but also leaving the house and babies behind.
So. What kind of traveler are you? I am not always good at going with the flow. I can be patient up to a certain point. We had a really easy travel experience compared to some others. My niece and her husband recently returned from a trip to Grand Cayman. Their three hour flight turned into a nine hour flight and they were stuck on the plane on the runway for another two hours. They did not leave the plane for nine hours. Their returning flight was then canceled and they spent the night in the airport. I know these things happen and it is just a chance you take when traveling.
I tried to be very open minded about the checking in process at the airport and all of the price gouging but sometimes it’s hard to do. I think that may just be a part of travel that you take or you don’t, and don’t means you don’t go. I love visiting different places and even different countries it’s just the getting back and forth that sometimes takes the fun out of it. But I will try harder to “go with the flow”
I leave you with this picture of sweet Kitty Kitty. After we got home I unpacked the bags and put the laundry in the laundry room to start the next day. About ten minutes later I looked in and there was Kitty Kitty on top of the laundry basket. She does this every time we travel. Sometimes she tries to get in the suitcases. I think it is her way of saying how much she missed us.
All of our experiences are memories that we will never forget. Our trip involved so many fun things it far outweighed anything bad. We felt fortunate and blessed to be able to take such a fun trip together.
A few travel tips: 1. Do everything you can do in advance to make things easier 2. Don’t skip meals this can make you hangry. It makes things worse. 3. Don’t try to cram too much into your trip. Leave a little wiggle room for extras. 4. Stay hydrated. This is so important when you fly. 5. Go online and check out the area. you will be visiting. Look for local restaurants and things to do ahead of time. 6. Try not to have too much to carry with you. A large bag can become so heavy and tiring. I bought a small travel bag on wheels and it is just wonderful. I will show it in my Friday Favorites. 7. HAVE FUN!!!!! you never know when you will get another chance to visit that particular area.
What kind of traveler are you? Any tips you might share to make things easier?
Several weeks ago I visited Louisville Kentucky. I had to go there for a work meeting. Because I work in tourism a lot of our meeting time is spent attending other tourism attractions. I was so excited when I heard we were going to the Little Loomhouse.
The Little Loomhouse is a nonprofit, community based, fiber arts education center and historic site. This site offers both tours and weaving lessons and a fiber and spinning tour. The site is actually home to three cabins and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
This entire place came to be because of a woman named Lou Tate. Lou Tate was a master weaver and she invented the Table Loom also known as the Little Loom. This loom makes it possible to teach weaving anywhere because you can take the loom just about anywhere.
Lou Tate was born In Bowling Green Kentucky. Her interest in weaving began when she received five generations of weaving patterns from an elderly weaver, Nan Owen.
In the 1940’s, Tate started an experimental weaving group. This weaving business led her to her first love, teaching.
The Lou Tate Foundation took over the property in 1979 shortly after Tate’s death. A grant from the City of Louisville in 1983 enabled much needed restoration for the cabin, Tophouse.
For more information and facts about this fantastic place visit the website www.littleloomhouse.org
Our group arrived at the Little Loomhouse on a rainy morning. We were taken there by bus. We had to walk up a very steep hill to get to the cabin at the top, Top House, where we would have a weaving lesson. I was beyond excited.
We walked into the cabin and even though it was fairly small it was packed with tables and tabletop looms, beautiful bolts of thread and finished works that would take your breath away. We were told to pick a loom and have a seat. A lot of our crew looked around nervously like this was not their “cup of tea”. Although in the end I think everyone enjoyed it.
Our guide gave us a quick lesson and we were soon on our way to making a mug rug. I could quickly see how the rhythmic movements could be so soothing and relaxing.
My finished piece.
We also went to one of the other cabins. A lot of spinning wheels and looms were on display. This was more of a museum with so much history.
And of course I just had to have one of the hand woven bags that were for sale.
I think their mission statement sums up everything Lou Tate would have wanted The Little Loomhouse to be:
We are a Louisville, Kentucky Landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places. Our mission is to continue the legacy of founder Lou Tate, by educating students of all ages about the history of weaving and textile arts through diverse programs, residencies, and community partnerships and ensuring the preservation of our landmark cabins. The Foundation serves students of all ages and cultures who want to learn about the history and practice of weaving, textile, fiber, and folk arts.
I hope you enjoyed this visit to the Little Loomhouse in Louisville Kentucky.
Southern Patches 