Hot springs, Norma and Asheville.

This weekend is fall break. Since I am blessed enough to have a job, I am required to work this weekend; because of that, I was not able to come home and see my family like the rest of the 98.6% of Milligan students. So Brett, Leah and I all decided to take a road-trip to Asheville, NC. This is about an hour route--if you're going straight there on the interstate. However, down here in the hills of Tennessee, it's better to drive through the countryside and take in nature and all of God's beautiful creation. We loaded the car with the essentials and started our journey and picked up Leah on the way out. We headed to Hot Springs, North Carolina, hoping to find none other than: natural hot springs. However, when we got there--we found that "hot springs" was actually a yard with 4 hot tubs sectioned off for "relaxation with nature." Nothing natural about it. It was complete with chlorine and everything....how disappointed we were to find out their "natural springs" were anything BUT natural.
Our route there took us through some back hills. Imagine the stereotypical Tennessee hills and the yards you find there....that's what we saw. There were many abandoned cars. At one point we began counting them. There was a little Ford escort crashed into a dirt enbankment; a jeep thing from 1948, stashed on the side of the road, sprouting shrubbery; many random trucks...you know, those kinds of things. Also, almost every barn (except the one pictured left) had tobacco hanging from within it to dry it out. I don't think I realized how much tobacco is down here, but apparently there's quite a bit. It seems to be the cool thing for men to chew ther tabacky. Most of them have a "fat lip", signaling the juicy, brown flaky stuff in their mouth--kind of gross if you ask me--.
While driving through the hills, we passed a field and noticed an elderly lady bending over and stuffing hay into a garbage bag. We all saw her and kind of had the same thought. We debated for a few minutes before turning around and driving back past her house and pulling into her driveway. She looked up and noticed us, but returned back to her work. As we walked up to her we said "hello" and introduced ourselves. We asked her if we could help her rake the rest of the hay and put it into the bags for her. She was a little reluctant at first or maybe she just wasn't quite clear as to why
3 young girls were on her property? She let us take over for her and went to "the building" --aka: the shed---to retrieve more trash bags. Leah raked a couple more piles for her and Brett and I began filling the three trashbags. She introduced herself as Norma and she told us she was 88 years old. Norma was in really good health for being 88 years young! For heaven's sake she was outside raking hay and bending over putting it into trashbags. It was cool to get to talk to her for a little bit. We stayed with her for about a half an hour. She talked about her family and how some landmarks around the area were named after her grandfather. Brett asked her if she could take some photos of her for her photography class. Norma said it would be alright but only after she took her shower cap off. Haha! We told her we liked it on and she should keep it on. She had been wearing it because she has just washed her hair and wanted to keep the gnats out of it. (By the way: I've never seen such a perpetual attack of gnats before! It was pretty nasty! ;)



















We stayed at the Comfort Inn in Asheville last night. Today we walked around down
town Asheville and found a cute little cafe to dine for lunch. We then headed back to school. It was a good and relaxing time for us all, even though it wasn't long enough and we each wish that we could've been with our families. The trees are changing and fall is coming upon us. I miss you all and love you so much!!!