The Great Szerminski Adventure

I am lucky to be part of a large extended family. I have 27 first cousins - about half from each side of the family - and with many of them married and having families of their own it can sometimes be difficult to keep track of everyone. This week we had the pleasure of visiting my cousin Justin and his family in Georgia. I haven’t seen him for a couple of years, but was determined to visit if we were going to be in the neighbourhood. The girls didn’t really remember Justin from past family gatherings (too many cousins!) and I’m glad they had the chance to meet him, his wife Joyce, their son Christopher, and their grandson Oliver.     We met Justin at his workplace in Chatsworth. He has a company that manufactures turf, and we were lucky to be given a tour of the plant. It was very cool to see the giant machines that sew the rolls of turf, especially the large arrays of yarn that were feeding them machines. The girls got to press the button that controlled the machin...

On Wednesday night we headed over to Forest Gully Farms where we stayed one night, in wonderful houses built in side hills. I don’t know much about The Hobbit, but I do know that the houses that we stayed in looked like Hobbit houses. There at Forest Gully Farms we met a very nice man who showed us around. We went to see some of there chickens, because we were told that we could hold them. After I had chased chickens around for awhile I caught a beautiful black one. Right now, after Forest Gully Farms we are staying at a wonderful campsite where there are wonderful hiking trails. Cloudland Canyon State Park is wonderful! So far we have been hiking every day. On the first day we started with a small hike but then it got bigger. Before we started heading back, because I was already really tired, my mom saw another waterfall that she wanted to see. To get there, you needed to go down, and to go down, you needed to take the stairs. So we went down the, approximately five hundred sta...

It’s been a week and this is the first time I’ve had a chance to have the iPad to myself to make a log entry. So, my thoughts: It is amazing to be travelling with my family. We’ve seen so much already, but, more importantly we get to experience these things together. Some comments in not any particular order: Who’d a thought that The Shire was a real place? Well, it is and we got to go there. Sleeping in a hobbit house is something I can scratch off the bucket list. The accents of the Americans we’ve met so far have been awesome to listen to. With Southerners, I think the accent is such that the women speak in higher voices and the men in lower tones. I like the way the men say “Yeah”. Although I’m not a true country music fan, going to the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum in Nashville was awesome. Even more awesome was the performance we saw at the Grand Ole Opry. Every performer paid tribute to the hallowed ground they were on. In case you didn’t know, the Grand Ole O...

After Mammoth Caves, we camped for two nights in Nashville before moving on to a place that for Miriam and I was secret. We made seveural guesses as to where we were going, but none of them were exact. The closest one was one of mine- I guessed that the place we were staying was underground. Based on my mom and dad’s reactions, I thought that I might be close, but I did not know the full extent of it at all. We arrived at a place that at first looked normal. Two friendly dogs named Jedi and Trooper ran up to greet us, so I spent the first several minutes of our visit trying to figure out if it was possible to pet two dogs at once. The answer to that question, by the way, is no. Then we saw where we would be staying. You might remember that on my last post, I mentioned that if you’re a fan of The Hobbit you’d better read this one. And that’s because where we were staying literally looked like a series of hobbit holes. The first hole was the most like a hobbit hole- ...

A day after the airplane ride that brought us back from Cuba, my family and I headed over to St. Catharines for one more visit to family before the big trip. With a delicious breakfast to fuel us, we set off on a nine- hour ride to Kentucky in the car. I brought as many things to do as I could, and I hope they don’t run out. Among the most important things was my Kobo, three books (I was only allowed to bring three) and as many writing tools as I could find. The first six hours or so of the drive went by faster than I would’ve expected. We stopped for lunch at a Subway where this guy thought it was really cool when my dad used tap with his credit card. We listened to some recorded This Is That shows. (If you haven’t heard of that, it’s a radio show where the hosts tell fake stories that are hilarious. It’s now finished- the last episode was just a while ago.) The last three hours went by very slowly- I would look at the GPS’s countdown of how long we had left to drive, and only a f...

Our last night in Tennessee was a special one. On Wednesday we drove from Nashville to Forest Gully Farms, which is just south of Nashville in Santa Fe. The girls didn’t know where we were headed - they tried hard to guess where we were staying after we told them it was neither camping nor a hotel. The drive to the farm was beautiful...rolling hills and farms everywhere. At one point when we were only a couple of kilometres from our destination the road disappeared under a creek and I (being shy about such things) insisted that we turn around and go another way. Our hosts later told us that crossing the creek was part of the experience, so I guess we didn’t get the full experience! First Gully Farms is beautiful. The owners, Jon and Mandy, have been working on the land for several years. Jon gave us a tour of the farm and explained that he was working hard to populate the land with native plants that could thrive on the land with very little maintenance. We learned about some ...

Yesterday was the big take off of our trip when we drove around, our destination, Elizabethtown in Kentucky. It was a very windy day to be starting the trip, but at least we were not planing on camping that day. We slept in a small Motel with happiness, knowing that we had gotten through our long first day. I am very happy that we got out nine and a half hour drive over with because I never want to drive that much at a time again. The next day me and Lucy went for a quick swim in the motels warm pool, and then headed out to the Mammoth Cave. Mammoth Cave is a very big cave in Kentucky near Cave City. Domes and Dripstones was our tour for the day. We went into the cave and looked around at all of the cool types of rocks and minerals. My favourite type is stalactites which are drippy rocks that come from the ceiling of the cave. You can’t see them moving, but you can see all the cool patterns that they create and how old they really are from there size. When we came out of the cave we n...