Our Final Day

This being the very last day of our time here in Chattanooga, we let the boys sleep as long as they wanted - that meant 9:30 a.m. for Reilly.  Seeing as how they pretty much take over the front part of our home, that meant not a whole lot happened till he was up.  Once bedding was put away and the bed changed back to a sofa, we were all able to move around a bit more and work on getting breakfast on the table.  Once again the boys enjoyed M & M pancakes along with yogurt and bananas.

Then it was time to set off for the pool.  Carolyn enjoyed doing her water aerobics while they played for an hour and a half.  There weren't a whole lot of people at the pool since it is Sunday and many campers back up and leave in the morning hours.  That worked out well for us :-)

After we all took showers and cleaned up we enjoyed lunch together and just chatting about things we've done during the past week.

Then it was time for our last expedition, a trip to Raccoon Mountain to tour the Crystal Caves.  We couldn't believe how cool it was when we walked into the little gift shop to get our tickets especially after observing that the doors were open.  But once we started our tour we found out why.  The cave temperature is around 58 degrees and they keep the entrance open to the store.  The cool air of the cave provides fantastic air conditioning without paying for electricity.

At this particular cave, they major in offering opportunities to put on helmet, padding, etc and actually cave for several hours which includes lots of wiggling through small tunnels and doing everything by the lantern light on the helmet.  Several people were coming out when we were preparing to start looking a bit tired and quite muddy.  We were glad we'd only optioned for the "walking" tour!!!  There were several big rooms

with very high ceilings but then also corridors where we had to bend down a bit to get though.

Since they leave the doors open the cave isn't nearly as "live" as some we've seen but was certainly better than Ruby Falls Cavern as far as its offerings of stalagmites and stalagtites, columns, drapery, flow stone, and other such cave offerings.

At the end of the walk, they had a stalagmite we could touch that had been slit open so we could see what the inside looks like.  It is really quite beautiful.

The boys are pretty tired after our active week and really just wanted to "hang" for awhile after we returned and they enjoyed a dish of ice cream.  Then they headed off for a last visit to the pool while Carolyn worked on preparing dinner.

Following dinner the boys had a spray string fight out on the park lawn area

A couple of games of Skip Bo and a round of Farkle finished off our last evening.  We packed away some of our stuff in anticipation of an early morning start toward North Carolina and Reilly's home.  It was a great week!