Doe River Gorge

Something that's pretty fun about living around here is that there are a good number of hiking paths within about 30-40 minutes.  A few weeks ago, Garrett had a random day off during the week so we decided to check out a new trail.

This one is called Doe River Gorge, and it's a converted Rails to Trails.  It was a perfect day for walking/hiking - in the low 60s and sunny (but shady along the trail).  It wasn't my favorite trail -- the "rails" are still there so it was kind of awkward to walk.  At some parts there wasn't much space to walk on the outside of the tracks, so we were stuck walking between the rails which is always a little awkward because then you have to really watch where you are stepping so you don't trip on the ties.  So, I felt like I spent most of the hike looking down to see where I was walking (which wasn't easy since I was wearing Henry in front of me), instead of looking all around at the scenery. Which was okay, because it's winter and it wasn't all that gorgeous right now, mostly just a bunch of dead trees.  But I bet in the summer and fall it's just beautiful - I do want to go back for that.

There were some fun tunnels we walked through.  Olivia liked that.  I'm always fascinated walking along railroad tracks, imagining them being build by hand over 100 years ago.  I can't fathom how long it took them, and how much effort that had to go into grading the ground, blowing out rocks, digging out tunnels, building bridges.  It's pretty neat.

Olivia really liked throwing rocks at the icicles and knocking them down so they would shatter to the ground:

All in all, a really nice morning.  We stopped at a little hole-in-the-wall Mexican place near our house for lunch, we had never been there before.  It was pretty good, and we definitely want to go back!  It's pretty authentic so it was a little hard to order (no prices listed anywhere, most menu items didn't seem familiar to me), but the chips and salsa were great and that's what's most important to me at Mexican restaurants.

It sure is nice when Garrett gets those random days off!  We try to make the most of them.

Snow Day

In early January, it snowed here in eastern Tennessee.

Why did I even bother taking this picture, you ask?  Well, I got a text from the school district saying that school was letting out early that day.  You know, because of the snow.

I totally understand when cities - especially here in the South - need to shut down, even for a small amount of snow that may seem inconsequential for this New England girl.  I get it.  Cities aren't equipped for that, plus it just makes people nervous and they don't drive well in it. Fine.  But this??  This is crazy.

Thankfully, we did get more snow, late that night (it was a Friday night).  We woke up on Saturday to a good 4 inches.  Most of the city was shut down and we enjoyed just hanging out at home and being cozy in the house with nowhere to go.  The kids played outside a couple times, too.

It didn't snow again that weekend, but regardless I still woke up on Monday morning to a text on my phone saying that school was cancelled that day.  The roads around us were certainly clear, but I think that there were still a few roads in the outer parts of the city that may have still had some snow on them, and busses may have had a hard time getting to them. I don't know, that's just my guess.  So we had another fun day at home together.  Garrett had the day off which was nice (post call - he had just finished up working a week of nights).  Thankfully the school district has built-in make up days, so instead of having a random day off on Feb 3, they had school.  Nice to make it up now instead of at the end of the year, I guess.

Walking trails

One thing we really loved about living in Wisconsin was the wide variety of walking trails in the city and near our house.  Nearly every weeknight in the summer, we would get in the car and drive to a nearby trail or down to the lake to enjoy the fresh air and gorgeous weather.  Tennessee doesn't have quite the same amenities as Madison, though.  We did manage to find one trail not too far away, and we went a couple times after Henry was born while the weather was still nice in the evenings.

I don't think this picture quite captures just how steep this hill was!  The whole trail was very hilly and very steep at some points.  I'm not going to complain, though, because my glutes could use it and it felt good to put in the effort after being pregnant and sore for so long.  Sadly, the evening light and warm weather didn't last too long after Henry was born so we've put our evening walks on hiatus for a while.  Hopefully we can pick things up again when the days get longer and the weather gets warmer, which should hopefully be by March or so here.  Maybe even by this summer we will live in a house, in a neighborhood with sidewalks.  Then we can just walk out our door and go walking every night like we did in Florida, if we don't want to drive to a trail.  Here's hoping!