Epic weekend

Sitting in the house in an RV park in Pigeon Forge, TN, a park that I really appreciate being able to enjoy thanks to a new discovery, Tents for Troops, I suddenly hear banging and feel the house shaking. Since the kids are in the front room watching Wild Kratts, I don't suppose it is them, but I get up to investigate, find them sitting quietly, and decide to open the door. This is when I remember that the camp host had mentioned that we'd have a lovely view of the fireworks from Dollywood out our window, and sure enough, we pile outside to enjoy the show. A great ending to a fabulous stay that, while not free was certainly a very good deal for us.

Over the last week, we traveled first to Fort Campbell, KY, which was a horrible place for me, no internet, no television, no cell service, difficult to find, and although technically on base, not behind the gated part of the base, which made for an interesting crowd. We stayed the bare minimum amount of time there, although I will say, the kids wanted to stick around for another day because they had an amazing pool with a bunch of slides and such, but I couldn't be budged. ;)

From Fort Campbell, we traveled up to Mammoth Cave National Park, and celebrated H's birthday. We stayed at a nice park, Singing Hills RV Park, with kind hosts (Beth and Eldon - nice to hear that name!) that was just about right for us other than the fact that we didn't have access to a sewer set-up, and we were parked under a tree that dripped sap onto the RV, and it is now desperately in need of a good washing. We enjoyed having WiFi, and it was about as close as you can get to Mammoth Cave without staying in the park itself.

We took the introductory tour, which was my only opportunity to go into the caves, and B & I had a chance to at least see the Rotunda and a few other short passages. The kids earned their twentieth Junior Ranger badge, and H celebrated his tenth birthday with the cave exploration, followed by Birthday milkshakes at Zaxby's and a trip to the theater to see Avengers:Age of Ultron.  A quick store-bought strawberry shortcake and a free ice cream treat from Beth and Eldon rounded out our gluttony for the afternoon.  We finished the night trying to fish at the RV park, which was disastrous, likely due to my ineptitude getting his fishing pole set up and re-lined and re-lined and so on, plus the banks of the pond were so muddy that we all slipped at least once into the muck, and we had no access to laundry, which was a little bit of an issue when C took a tumble into the mud.

Homemade biscuits and gravy and sausage, breakfast of birthday boys everywhere

A rare photo of the five of us at Mammoth Cave entrance

Entering the cave

Don't look back - you can't chicken out now!

Ceiling in the Rotunda

The wall behind us in the Rotunda

Cool cove on the outside

Our post-tour hike

Crazy monkeys

Birthday cake

As the second part of H's big birthday weekend blowout, the three oldest took a Trog Tour, for 8-12 year olds (okay, we fudged a bit on C's age, but H really wanted him along for this, so C & K played twins for this episode of our adventure). I think the kiddos really had a great time, they came up from the cool caves sweaty, dusty and smiling.

Preparing for the Trog Tour

Helmets on

My blue eyes, Frank's everything else

Feeling pretty froggy impersonating an eight year old

Whew, they made it out alive

Taking off all of that gear

But, he did say that we lived up to his expectations set last year that his "big" tenth birthday should be "epic." Where does he get this stuff? Following all of this excitement, I think coming here to Pigeon Forge was a good idea, a chance to get a little down time, and I found a place to get the oil changed in the RV.

Except...

We arrived with an eye toward relaxing for the afternoon, doing a basic set-up and hitting the pool. The host set us up just in front of the pool, which was lovely, and since it was in the high 90's, and terribly humid, we took quick advantage of that cool water. I tried to set up and set the jacks, and someone turned on the air conditioning, which popped a breaker on the house batteries, which interrupted the jacks going down, which left the back jacks down, front jacks half way down and an error on the control panel which would not allow me to move any of them. I called the place that was going to do the oil change, and find they are the best known mobile service provider in town, so it was fairly convenient to reschedule the oil change for AFTER the jacks got fixed.

The mobile tech ran the jacks through a few sequences, and finally cleared the error from the control panel. He was then able to run the jacks through their paces, and they still weren't budging so he tapped the side of the motor, and low and behold, the motor worked again and the jacks operated smoothly three more times before I let the guy leave. The representative from the company who makes the jacks, Lippert, says that they'll cover the costs of getting them fixed. I'll hold my breath. It only took about four months to get a check from Ford, but at least this was a smaller wallet hit.