Today we took Dennis to the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail in the national park (which has always been a favorite of ours). He LOVED touring the old farm homesteads and seeing the mill, but I think his favorite thing was standing in between the front seats of the van with his head out the sunroof, looking at the scenery through his binoculars. He would periodically shout things like "MILL HO!" or "WATERFALL HO!" as if he were a ship lookout. He once warned "CAR HO! We need to pull over to the side!". We let lots of other cars pass us on the one-way route. We hiked a bit at the Ogle place at the start of the tour, spending a good hour on a short walk because we took time to observe the wildlife (lots of different mushrooms, tulip trees, hemlocks, ferns, mossy logs and rocks, a really neat snail, spiders, inchworms), something I had never taken much time to do before I had Dennis in tow. We saw a deer on the road, watching her as she watched us pass. We are leaving tomorrow and I still have never seen a bear in the park. That's probably a good thing--it's one thing Dennis did NOT want to see today (because he paid attention during the ranger lecture).
Tonight we went swimming at one of the pools near the cabin, also something we've never done before on a trip here. There's a gorgeous two-level pool, surrounded by rocks, and for 45 minutes, we had the entire huge thing to ourselves. We stayed in the lower pool because it's uniformly 4 feet deep (and larger than the upper one). Dennis asked if he could take off his floaties, and I let him. He surprised us big time with his amazing swimming ability! He jumped in and swam to the ladder, then swam to the side, then swam to me and then to Gran. He did this for 45 minutes, increasing the distance he could go. He swims with his head down basically under the water, face down (unnerving to watch, but it's what he learned in class and it's the correct way to do it), and he was learning to roll onto his side or onto his back and take a breath just before we decided to get out. He swam without his floaties for 45 minutes, and we were SO proud of him! He practiced his back float some, but mostly he wanted to swim back and forth to us and to the ladders or the pool walls. He would occasionally swim to the side with the boulder wall and climb up and rest on one for a second before resuming his training. He was so proud of himself for being able to do "real swimming" as he called it.
What a wonderful day we had! Got 2 text messages from David, one that they were rained on all day yesterday and were just soaked, and one that they stopped for lunch today at a shelter not too far away from Damascus where they would lunch and dry out some gear, and they planned to hike a couple more miles and then camp. They are planning to be in Damascus at noon tomorrow and we hope to be there not too long after that.
It has been so wonderful to have a Smokies vacation that was concentrated on the national park rather than the touristy towns and shopping. It makes me want to come back soon and explore more and more (though we never come here without spending at least a day in the park, I'd like to spend some time there every day of the next trip!). Though Dennis wanted to shop and shop (he said) for toys, he loved playing outside on the trails more than anything. I hope we have more of the same coming up in Virginia.
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