About 30 minutes down the long, twisty, windy road from where we were staying is Chimney Rock Park. The little tiny town surrounding the entrance has sprung up solely due to all the tourist traffic the park brings in. They also have a really good ice cream shop, see previous post. This is a perfect outdoor park for people with small children and those who are just plain lazy. They built an elevator inside the rock so you can just ride up to the top, look around and ride back down again. I admit, we took the elevator ride up just because I didn't want to try and get all those little legs up all those stairs.
Sam, my little nephew pretty much ran up all the stairs, making me think that maybe I could have had my kids do it as well. At least the older ones would have been fine. Oh well, we went down the stairs afterwards which turned out to be almost as tiring. My legs were definitely feeling it at the end. The kids wanted to hike to the falls, so that is what we did. Nicholas and Sophie were way ahead of us on the trail. They wanted to be the first ones there. When the main group was about 10 minutes away from the falls, we saw them walking dejectedly back towards us. "That's not a waterfall! It's more like a trickle! They shouldn't call them Falls. It's lying!" Guess the spring run off was long over with and there hadn't been any rain in a while, so the waterfall wasn't quite as majestic as they had hoped.
They tried to get us to let them sit on a rock and wait for us to get back, but I refused. If we had been in Switzerland, maybe, but I didn't want any Americans calling CPS on us, so they had to walk back they way they had come. I told them it was punishment for running so far ahead. They needed to always stay where someone in the group could see them in case they got lost. As we came around the corner and saw the waterfall, I could see instantly why the kids had been so mad. It was definitely less than I myself had hoped for. Plus, there was such a crowd of people pressed around the small stream of water you couldn't really get close to it without pushing your way through. I had Alexandra strapped to my back and didn't want to risk hurting her or anyone else for that matter, so I missed out on the refreshing splash of water I had been dreaming of while walking along the hot trail.
We decided to head back to the cars and took off along a different trail than the one we had taken from Chimney Rock itself. When we got to the parking lot, we realized that Nicholas and Sophie were not with us. Again they had run ahead of everyone, ignoring our request to stay with the group and had gotten lost. Chris went back to find them, and through inspiration he started in the upper parking lot by the elevator entrance first. There they were waiting, hot, tired, red-cheeked and angry that we had told them the wrong way to go. Uh, no. We told you to stay with the group, you took off and got yourselves lost, don't pin this on anyone else. Fortunately, they ended up somewhere they could easily be found. It could have been a much different blog entry had they taken the wrong trail and caused a search party to be sent out to look for them. We hope they have finally learned their lesson now.
Another scare came as we got everyone piled into the cars. Oma couldn't find her purse. She was afraid she had left it back at the falls. Just as she was about to head back to the trail to look for it, Adam pulled up with the purse safely stowed in the back of his car. Sam rode home with us, and Sarah rode home with Uncle Adam. Poor Sam got stuck in the car for a lot longer than he had probably planned on, since we decided to go shopping in Hendersonville just one more time, since we were already halfway there. There was one store that sold an adhesive gun I have been wanting for over a year now, and they were only open Monday through Friday 9 to 5. They closed before we could get there on Monday, so we had to go back a second time.
We hurried though, so we could get back in time for the talent show. We did make one quick stop at, where else, Taco Bell and picked up everyone some tacos. Sam seemed perfectly happy to munch on his taco and didn't say boo about being in the car so long. What a good boy. He can hang out with us anytime. After we got back home everyone gathered around for the main event.
Several weeks before the reunion, Oma had asked everyone to please prepare a talent for a family talent show. Chris and Nicholas had worked really hard on theirs, as had Noah. We were excited to see what everyone else had prepared as well. It turned out to be the absolute highlight of the entire week. Everyone did such a great job. Some were funny, some were just sweet, all were awesome. I honestly can&
#039;t think of one "act" I liked more than the others. Steven and Cristie and the boys singing about Pierre, the boy who didn't care, will stay in our memory for a long time. Jamis and Hayden playing the guitar together was so sweet, Steven's magic tricks were absolutely hysterical, and Amelia and David's trivia game involving all the siblings was both informative and hilarious. And I have never heard anyone speak as fast as Marcie did when she named all 50 states in alphabetical order in less than a minute. Great idea, Oma. Thank you to all participants again. I am only sad that our video camera ran out of film before it was all over. I think we caught most of it though.
That night we all went to bed early, tired out from all the day's activity.