After keeping only each other company for the last few months, we were so excited to share part of our summer adventure with our friends Ben and Sam who met us in Tennessee for a few days!
On Saturday, we visited the pool in our neighborhood with awesome mountain views and a full bar (how convenient). We had fun catching up and grilling dinner back home on our deck.
On Sunday we explored the Tuckaleechee caverns with a tour leading us on a 1.25 mile underground path (and many stairs..) through the caves. The caverns were discovered in by 2 boys aged 6 and 8 in the 1950s. Our tour guide, “Moose” was the great (great?) grandson of the 6 year old and grew up playing in the caverns. On the tour we saw the “big room”, a large cavern space the size of a football stadium, “silver falls”, a 210-foot subterranean waterfall (technically taller than Niagara Falls, though only the bottom portion was visible from the cavern), an underground stream that followed along much of the pathway, and tons of cave formations (stalactites, stalagmites, and columns galore). We were told we could drink from the stream because it was “99.8% pure” so we filled up our water bottles and gave it a taste. It tasted like water and no one got sick, so we’ll count that as a win!
We ended the day with wine slushees from a local winery, cornhole in our backyard, and an unexpected power outage.
The following day, we went tubing on Little River. We rented some tubes from a local business and floated down the river for about two hours until we reached the stop point where a bus picked us up and brought us back to the car for some lunch. Since our passes lasted all day, we decided to launch from their second outpost, which was a bit shorter (more like 30 min) but had slightly more intense rapids. After successfully navigating the second outpost, we wanted to make the most of our day so went back to the first outpost and launched off again. I’m not sure if that was the best idea, because it started to rain about 20 minutes after we pushed off, which made for a much colder float down the river this time around. We ended the evening with some card games a couple drinks back at the house.
Our last day together wasn’t quite as adventurous – we got hit with tropical storm Fred and it rained all day. We stayed in house just hanging out, playing games (unicorns and five crowns), and watching Love Island (one of our favorite past-times). All in all it was a great long weekend and we loved having visitors to share some memories with!
