A Quick Trip to Cherokee and Bryson City North Carolina-

Hello friends how are you? Last week no sooner had I gotten back from my trip to Nashville, well I did have one day at home, I was off again for another few days to North Carolina. Another tourism meeting and lots of fun this time getting to see some fun attractions. We stayed at Harrah’s Cherokee Casino Resort. It was a central location for both Cherokee and Bryson City. This hotel is very nice but I am too cheap to be much of a gambler. The hotel has lots of nice restaurants and shops. First stop Great Smoky Mountains Railroad.

Located in the heart of Bryson City North Carolina the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad is a favorite beautiful ride through western North Carolina. The views are amazing. We rode The Michigan one of the newer cars and it was fantastic.

Look at the Conductor isn’t he adorable

We were able to step outside between the cars and get some great photos.

I love the gentle rocking of the train and being able to see the beautiful scenery. We had great weather for the entire trip.

We rode the train down to The Nanatahala Outdoor Center. At NOC you can raft, hike, zip line, eat, shop and stay in some amazing cabins. It is the perfect place to chill out. We went back the next day for a longer visit. We had the chance to raft or zip line or just hang out by the water. I decided to sit by the river and chill out with a glass of wine or two. It was so relaxing. I even dipped my toes in the water and it was ice cold!!!!

After our day riding the train and visiting NOC we went back into the town of Bryson City. A charming town that I fell in love with. We had a little time for shopping. If you go you have to check out some of the small boutiques a couple of my favorites were: Humanite and Pursenality. For dinner we went to a great place to eat Everett’s Bistro. Everett’s is also a hotel with guest rooms. Believe it or not it used to be a bank. The owners have done a spectacular job with this Hotel and Bistro. We were able to tour some of the guest rooms. I can’t wait to go back and stay for a few days. We also had dessert on the rooftop. It was a great day with so much to see and do. I was so glad to get back to the hotel that night.

The next morning we met a local guide for a trip to The Road to Nowhere. When I mentioned to my niece that I was going to Bryson City the first thing she said was, Oh!!! are you going to see the Road to Nowhere? To be honest I had heard of it but really wasn’t sure what it was about. We traveled about six miles in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. For the abbreviated version of this story click here.
It is a sad story. The local people can share with you many of their own stories of having to take boats out to visit their ancestors’ gravesites. Basically this was a road that was started, many families were displaced and then funding ran out and the road development just stopped. So it really is a road to nowhere.

Lot of graffiti on the walls of the tunnel. The middle of the tunnel can get quite dark. I can only imagine what it would be like at night.

We continued on with our local guide, Wendy, who was just a wealth of information. We went for a two mile hike through Deep Creek. What beautiful scenery with several waterfalls along our hike. Check out even more on the link below.

https://www.greatsmokies.com › deepcreek-waterfalls

Fontana Lake. I made our driver stop so I could get this picture.

Later that evening we had a tour of the Museum of The Cherokee Indian in downtown Cherokee. This is a wonderful museum full of history and culture. It has so much character and love put into it. This is a must see if you visit Cherokee. Another thing to check out while in Cherokee is Unto These Hills and The Cherokee Historical Association. We didn’t do those on this trip but I have been before.

And then later that night we had dinner prepared for us by some wonderful Cherokee women. We also participated I some of the traditional Cherokee Indian dances and heard some amazing stories while sitting around a bonfire. A great ending to a great day.

I always think a fire is magical

The next day we had meetings most of the morning and just like that I was back at home by late evening. I had a really good time on my short journey. It makes me realize just how much we have to see in this U.S.A. I want to see it all!!!!

So if you are looking for something to do in Western North Carolina I highly suggest you check out these adventures. You will love them!!!!

And always remember to Love Your Day Your Way!!!!

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The Art of Being Mindful

Do you remember the last meal you ate? Were you watching TV or scrolling through your phone? Were you with a person having a conversation? Do you remember what the food tasted like? Was it good? was the flavor something out of this world or just meh?

O.K. do you remember the last conversation you had with someone? your spouse? your child? your friend? Do you remember how they looked? what their voice sounded like? Did they sound sad, happy? do you even remember what the conversation was about.

Do you pull up to your workplace or your house or wherever you may be going and discover you don’t remember anything about the drive. You’re secretly thinking wow I hope I wasn’t speeding or I hope I didn’t run a stop light. Or worse.

We have all been guilty of not being mindful. In this day and time with technology all around us I think we are getting worse at being mindful of what we are doing. Even the good stuff. Information overload is something we deal with constantly. Sometimes when I am at work taking a work call I find myself closing my eyes so that I can focus on the person I am talking to. If I don’t I find myself looking at my computer screen, or my phone, listening to what is going on in the background around me. I know that when I am doing this I am not totally focusing on what is going on with that phone call. The person that I am talking to deserves my attention.

A few years ago when I was doing some travel shows I noticed this lack of focus had gotten particularly bad. The shows were an opportunity for you to sell your location or attraction to potential clients. You had about five minutes to sit down at a booth with a prospective client and give them your main selling points. The booths were set up in rows and you sat at their booth across the table from the potential buyer. In the meantime there was still the traffic of people walking behind you. It was a bit distracting. But what I noticed the last few times I did a show, was that the buyer instead of being focused on what I had to say, and heck I don’t think it was that boring, was constantly watching what was going on in the isle behind me. Their eyes would wander from mine to the people behind me. You would have thought Jason Momoa was walking by. Maybe something more interesting was going on in that conversation by those other people. I started having less and less confidence in the shows. they were expensive and I didn’t feel I was getting what I needed to get from them.

Multitasking is the evil twin of mindfulness. We are all trying to get more and more done so we’re on our phone while we’re watching TV, watching a ballgame, while trying to listen to the person in front of us talking to us.

Being mindful takes practice. Start with being mindful when you eat. This will not count when you rush through drive through and eat on your way home or on your way to the ball field or to your next stop. Because then you are already multitasking. We all do it. Sometimes we have to do it if we want to eat at all. Life gets in the way and you do what you have to do. I do it all the time. But start slow and practice and see if you don’t get more out of what you are doing.

I don’t have children but I know that I look back on when my nieces and nephews were young and I was spending time with them. I wish I had given them more of my attention and enjoyed everything they had to say and do. I wish I had listened to my mom and dad and grandparents when they told family stories that I thought I had heard a hundred times and couldn’t stand to hear one more time.

Multitasking causes stress. You may think you are getting more done but you are actually not getting anything completely finished because your mind is going in so many different directions.

As I said being mindful takes practice so start slow. The next time you are doing laundry feel the clothes in your hands, feel the fabric, notice the warmth if the clothes just came out of the dryer. When you are eating notice the texture and the flavor of the food. When you are talking to someone, and this is something I learned from a good friend a few years ago, look that person directly in the eye, listen to their voice, hear what they are saying. So many times what someone is truly telling you is in their eyes, the sound and range of their voice or the expression on their face. If you are looking at your phone or something else going on around you, you just might miss something very important.

So yes I think mindfulness is a lost art. We are only here once so pay attention!!!

I took this picture one morning on my way to work. I looked over my shoulder while driving down the road and saw this scene and had to turn around and go back to get it. I was late for work but it was totally worth it to me.

Love your day your way

Happy Friday

Hello friends and Happy Friday!!!! I don’t think I have ever been so happy to see Friday get here. But wasn’t Monday like about five minutes ago? Wow!!! I do not know how this week went by so fast. It has been a long week physically. I have had something to do every night this week after work. Weeks like this stress me out sometimes. Monday night was book club. I didn’t t read the entire book. I checked out the book on audio through Tennessee Reads which is the online library that I often use when the books I need are available. It’s free so that is definitely a plus. If you haven’t checked this out you need to. Each state has an online library and usually it is through your local library. I felt like this way I could at least listen when I didn’t have time to sit and read. The book is Glory Over Everything and it is really good so far. One thing I like about my book club is that we have such a diverse group and many different books are chosen. Some of these are books I would not normally pick for myself but when I get into them I really like them. After planning to go to book club all weekend and trying to finish the book. I didn’t make it. I had to work later than I expected and then had to run home and take care of fur babies because it was my husband’s late day at work. So by the time all of this happened It was just too late to get there.

I have been trying to add some workouts into my daily routine. In doing this instead of the usual forms of exercise I have been trying to do more physical work around the house and yard. Oh man did I make a mistake trying to work in my yard Tuesday evening after I got off work. First of all it was about ninety degrees and the humidity was even worse. I started trimming bushes in my yard and I was only able to work for about an hour and a half before I was soaking wet and had sweat running in my eyes. I am so ready for cool weather. I did get a lot of my shrubs cut in the front of my house and it actually looks like someone lives there now.

Wednesday night I went to “The Village” I have probably mentioned this before. This is where my mother in law is living. It is an assisted living village. Very nice with only about 25 people living there. Each room is like an individual apartment. The meals are served in a small cafeteria. There is always a nurse on duty to give meds and assist if anything goes wrong. There are also people to help bathe the residents and there is even a hair salon for those who cannot go out by themselves. My mother in law has been there for a little over a year. She broke her hip in March of 2018 and because of complications from a really bad infection she can no longer walk on her own. She uses a walker and a wheelchair. She is not able to stay at home by herself. At least once a week I go and pick her up and we go out and get something to eat and take a good long drive. We are usually out for a couple of hours and it gives her some time away from the village.

On Thursday night we had a Spaghetti Dinner and Auction fundraiser for a civic group that I am a member of. This dinner and auction is a ton of work. As it is with just about any organization like this there are only a few dedicated people who seem to get stuck with all the work. So it was really late by the time I got finished with all of this and got home.

But today is Friday!!! Yay!!!! and I really don’t have a lot planned for the weekend and that is a good thing. I wanted to share with you a few things I have been loving the last couple of weeks.

I finally finished the granny square blanket I have been working on for so long. This is actually made up of 20 large granny squares with ten rows in each square. There was no rhyme or reason to the colors. I just had about twelve balls of yarn in a basket and I would pick them out randomly and crochet them. Now that I have finished and I need another big project to work on or maybe two or three. You can see more of the individual squares from this post.

Look at this little cactus flower that bloomed from my cactus family. I have had this cactus for several years and this is the first time it has bloomed. Those two stalks came up overnight and bloomed the next day. But by the next day it had wilted down to nothing. Such beauty for such a short time.

Isn’t she beautiful. I know I may be a tad bit prejudice but Kitty Kitty has totally stolen my heart.

My work place early in the mornings before it gets too hot to be outside.

I am loving this iced coffee from Dunkin Donuts. We don’t have a Dunkin in our small town but my coworker lives in Maryville and there is one there and she brings us an iced coffee a couple of times a week.

So how was your week? and what are you up to this weekend?

Remember to always love your day your way!!!

Sister Lunch

For more than a decade me and my sisters have been having sister lunch every Wednesday at noon at a little restaurant in town. It started with “hey let’s get together and have lunch.” I think it has always been on Wednesday. We have had to change the day a few times because of one sister or another being out of town. We sometimes do it on Friday. But for the most part it is always on Wednesday. The restaurant where we meet is a combination of American and Italian food. The Gondolier in Sweetwater. The owners know us and when we walk in we have a particular side of the restaurant and a table where we sit. Well this actually depends on how many people are coming to sister Lunch. I’ll explain more about that in a minute. The waitress knows our drink order and usually meets us at the table with our drinks.

When Sister Lunch first started it was me and my two sisters Sandy and Pat. My sister Carolyn lived in Georgia at the time and couldn’t often make it to sister lunch.

The three of us would get together and catch up on the weekly happenings in our lives. We would give encouragement, advice, listen to troubles and basically solve all the world’s problems. You would be amazed at what all we could discuss in an hour. We have been there through kids, grandkids, illness, breakups, jobs, retirement, death and just about anything you can imagine. Oh and we laugh and laugh.

When we leave the restaurant we stand in the parking lot and hug and yell I love you to each other like we won’t see each other for months. People sometimes look at us a little strangely. Most of the time we will be seeing each other in a day or two. But hey you never know.

After a few years my sister Carolyn retired from her job in Georgia and moved back to Tennessee. She became a regular at sister lunch.

My niece also came to lunch when she could and her two boys would join us when they weren’t in school. Then my nephew and his wife started meeting us when they had a free day. My cousin Cathy and her husband Carl came from Texas to visit their granddaughter in Tennessee and came to Sister Lunch.

My sister Carolyn passed away suddenly a couple of years ago. We didn’t go to sister lunch for a while because it was just too painful not having her there.

We soon returned to having Sister Lunch though because we knew she would want us to do that.

Me and my sisters and my niece Tammy also do a Sister Trip. We usually go somewhere close by like Gatlinburg Tennessee for a few days. Here is a recap of our Sister Trip last year.

After my sister passed away her daughter started joining us. At times we might have up to eight or nine people at Sister Lunch. If someone is having a birthday or getting close to their Birthday we put a balloon on their chair and bring a Birthday cake. We never miss a reason to celebrate and have cake.

The number of people who come to Sister Lunch goes up and down but it is almost always me and my sisters, Sandy and Pat.

We figure we have been to over 500 lunches and spent thousands of dollars and shared billions of laughs. I think that is time very well spent.

I wouldn’t give anything for our Sister Lunches. So if you are ever in Sweetwater on a Wednesday at noon. Join us at the Gondolier. The more the merrier.