BettyShmetty: Road Trip Journal Day 6...Go jump off a cliff!

You know, you have to be careful sometimes what you say to your kids...

Yeah. Today, we took our little act back on the road and went to Alabama! We drove to a place called Little River Canyon which is carved through Lookout Mountain and jeez! that place is unbelievably beautiful! The first area we went to had a waterfall and was in, well, a canyon. I know, right? I'm a genius! The river is pretty low right now, so we were able to walk over a bunch of the rocks and boulders to get to some shallow pools. Here's a picture...

More boulders and rocks later, we reached this area which is actually behind the waterfall...the area where the water is flowing towards the fall.

Of course, the boys wasted no time getting into the fast-flowing water. We moms got in too, but were a little more cautious on the slick rocks. We spent some time sitting in the cool water and then decided to make our way down to the bottom of the canyon into the river bed below (it's mostly dry) in order to find some river glass. Little did I know just how far down we had to go to get to the river bed...about 300 feet down. Down a cliff. With rock walls. Not a path. Look, here's what we climbed down..

Wait, this is only the beginning...there's more...

Did I mention that I was wearing flip flops? No? Well, I was. Hey, I know it sounds stupid. Of course, had I known I would be scaling walls and rocks and boulders, I would probably have worn my sneakers, but I didn't know that, so I wore my flip flops. I am from Florida you know. We don't have mountains and cliff walls there.

So we got to the bottom with only one injury, I scraped my knee on the wall coming down. I was just glad I didn't break my neck! The river bed was really cool and we found a lot of glass. About 3 or 4 pounds for me with Jack scoring the coolest piece, the mouth of an old bottle with a TINY little opening...clearly old old old! And after walking (make that scrambling over many giant and smaller boulders) for maybe a half hour, we arrived at the area at the bottom of the waterfall I showed you in the beginning of the post. The kids jumped in the water and made their way over to this really neat and HUGE boulder sticking up at an angle in the water and started jumping off into the water.

After getting warmed up on this 12 foot drop, the boys were ready for bigger action and asked Cindy to take us to the Hippie Hole, which is where the big cliffs for jumping are. Why is it called the Hippie Hole? I have no idea. Wait, let me go google it and I'll see if I can find out...I'm back, but I still don't know why. There are hundreds of sites mentioning it as an awesome swimming hole with great jumping off places, but no explanation for the name. On the way back through the dry river bed at the base of the canyon, we came across this little guy...

Actually, he wasn't that little, maybe 4 feet long. Please take note of his position. That's called a striking position. He was originally crawling away from us and when the boys saw him, of course they wanted to catch him and play with him...and yes, I did say play. with a snake. The snake didn't think it was a good idea either and after Jack grabbed him by the tail, he proceeded to get ready to bite him! Now, the boys said, "Oh, he's only a King Snake and isn't poisonous." Oh, well, in that case, I thought, by all means, please, go ahead and play with him! NOT! Boys!

And just to get the image of my children dying at the bottom of the canyon from poisonous snake bites or falling over the edge of the waterfall out of my mind, I took these happy flower photos...

And deep cleansing breath....ommmmm...yes, all better now...back in my happy place. Where was I? Oh yeah, we made our way back over to the wall we climbed down and then climbed back up. I have to say, climbing back up was a little easier than climbing down and then it was back in the car for the 20 mile-twisty-turny-up-and-downy trip to Hippie Hole. Did I mention I get really car sick when I am not the driver on said twisty-turny roads? Well, I do and by the time we got to our destination, I was feeling a little queasy (as was Jack, what can I say, he's my boy) so the cure for that was more climbing of course! And then we arrived here...