It's been a while...

We are such bad people! Our last post was over a month ago! Not too much has been going on here - just work and play. Oh, and trying to our taxes done on time - who out there dreads tax season every year? We have been out of town for the past two weekends. Last weekend we went to Pickwick Dam, TN to spend time with our families and celebrate the slew of birthdays we all have between February and March. The weekend before that, we went home - John went off to Super Bulldog Weekend and I went off to a friend's baby shower.

This was the view from our hotel room in Pickwick Dam...

Here we are at our family birthday celebration at the Catfish Hotel, one of the oldest family-owned restaurants in the country...

And what birthday celebration would be complete with a delicious cake from Edgar's? The cake was huge! We ended up giving the bulk of it to the waiters and waitresses in the restaurant!

Here we are at with some of Pickwick Dam in the background...

On the way back from Pickwick, we took the Natchez Trace back to Nashville and stopped at some of the sights along the way. We try to take the Trace home whenever possible. It's so peaceful, there's hardly any traffic (no stoplights or stop signs whatsoever!), and it's conserves gas b/c of the speed limit. Plus, it takes the same amount of time for us to go home by the Trace as it does the Interstate.

This is a creek that runs across the original Natchez Trace. There are places along the new Natchez Trace where you can get off road a little bit and travel down the original Trace. This is one of the spots where we traveled the original Trace.

This is the sight where Merriwether Lewis of the great Lewis and Clark explorer duo died - this was erected over the spot where his remains were found. According to the plaques here and at the Grinder House close by (the Inn where he was staying), his gun accidentally went off and killed him.

Here is a picture of part of the original Natchez Trace. You can't really tell from the picture, put the pathway is extremely narrow. I don't know how a buggy with two horses pulling it side by side would have made it. It would have been a stretch for one horse and a buggy in my opinion. Of course, I guess it's always possible that the original Trace has changed some over the years.