entertaining corn

corn? entertaining? Yummy, perhaps. King, perhaps. But entertaining? Yes, in fact, it is.

Our fall day in the mountains started out in Cherry Log at the Fall Festival. I was expecting a church bazaar type happening ans was not too far off. We were pleasantly delighted with the low-key affair, however. Cherry Log has a very nice “open-air” covered building that really works well as “artist stalls.” And the local artists had soem very impressive crafts for sale. In particular, we really liked the shawls from Ruth Hale’s “Fantasy Fibers”. Barbara bought Camille a nice knitted purse while Chloe had her face painted. In addition to the artisans, there was also a nice stage with music. The girls BEGGED for boiled peanuts (not my thing), and Barbara negotiated a small sized bag for the girls. We also bought a peck of local sweet potatoes. Sweet.

From this small town gathering, we headed up to Tennessee (Chloe couldn’t believe we were going all the way to Tennessee!) to the River Maze along the banks of the Occoee. We had been once before, back in 2006, but it had been closed that day and they let us in just cause they were such nice people … This time around, everything was up and running and we were ready to have FUN! The girls insisted on going on the (what appeared to be a VERY boring) cow train first. We then hopped on the hay wagon out to the corn maze. Somehow, Barbara had lost the maps between here and there, so we just winged it, and all turned out fine in the end. The girls loved going through the maze and running ahead to scout out the possibilities.

After finding our way out of the maze, we headed over to the pumpkin patch. Chloe claimed that there were not many pumpkins there, but I don’t know what she was expecting. There were thousands of pumpkins there, still on their vines! A real pumpkin patch! And we had the whole thing just about to ourselves! We all picked out some pumpkins, then headed back to the entrance area via a hay wagon that we had to ourselves. We had five token for the cob shooting range. The little boy who was ahead of us, was the most beautiful guy with the sweetest smile ever. He was so giddy about hitting the target with his corn cob (fired through a air cannon). The girls took their turns — Camille hit the target and was awarded a dollar (seemed like a strange prize to me, but hey?). We had some hot cider and popcorn, then headed back, stopping at a couple of geocaches on the way.