Holding A Moment: Tubing and Road to Nowhere...

In the morning PaPa took Grace and Sarah to try and shoot his .22. Sarah said it was a little weird to be holding an actual gun and shooting at a target, but she had fun giving it a try. She even hit the target.

We had been waiting all week to go tubing, but Thursday morning when we got up it was a bit chilly and none of us were to sure we wanted to brave the cold water and tube. However, as the morning went on things seemed to be warming up and we decided to go for it. I don't have any other pictures than this one and Michelle took it. We were getting ready for our first out of two runs down
Deep Creek. It is a pretty calm creek with a few small rapids here and there that make it fun. Brayden was still a bit nervous about the rapids from hitting his head earlier in the week and got scared half-way through. Jason got out with him and it was all about the girls riding the creek.

Next stop was the Road to Nowhere to see what it was all about. From the Greatsmokies.com website here is the story behind the "Road to Nowhere".

"In the 30's and 40's, Swain County gave up the majority of its private land to the Federal Government for the creation of Fontana Lake and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Hundreds of people were forced to leave the small Smoky Mountain communities that had been their homes for generations. With the creation of the Park, their homes were gone, and so was the road to those communities. The Federal government promised to replace Highway 288 with a new road and to those displaced residents, it was to have provided access to the old family cemeteries where generations of ancestors remained behind. But road fell victim to an environmental issue and construction was stopped, with the road ending at a tunnel, about six miles into the park. The environmental issue was eventually resolved, but the roadwork was never resumed. And Swain County's citizens gave the unfinished Lakeview Drive its popular, albeit unofficial name "The Road To Nowhere."