birthday weekend in Kentucky

Well, I told Eric that he should write a blog about his birthday in Kentucky, but he said that I should do it, so here we go! (I've decided to do this in photo essay form again.)

Eric's birthday was on Sunday, so we decided to take the whole weekend to do things he wanted to do. On Saturday we slept in, but not too long (it wasn't MY birthday), and then we headed to Middlesboro. We went to the Middlesboro Public Library to restock on DVDs and CDs....and on books, and then we headed to the Goodwill store, where we found this shirt with Eric's birthday on it!

Then we headed down Highway 25E toward Pineville to scout out the flea markets. We found a couple of sketchy ones with lots of.....interesting stuff for sale, but we found no amazing things that we needed to have. It's incredible what people can get away with selling.


We went to Pineville State Resort Park, stopping first at Lookout Point to look at Pineville from way up high!


Then we went to Chained Rock, which is so named because it's got a rock chained to another rock to prevent it from crashing down onto Pineville. (In reality, though, neither rock is going anywhere, with or without the chain.)

Here's Pineville from the Chained Rock site. (The Pineville Library and the Bookmobile are both visible in this picture...but so are a lot of things.)
Here are a couple of views of the rocks that are chained together.
Eric peeked down to check things out. Yep, it's a long way down!

After leaving Chained Rock, we went to Pine Mountain's dining room, where we had a buffet dinner--hooray! The buffet was interesting--it contained food from mashed potatoes to fish to what we think were frog legs.

Then we headed to Corbin to see Steve Carell's new movie, Dan in Real Life. It was cute, and we both liked it (proof that Eric likes chick flicks......if they've got Steve Carell).

When we got home, we watched Saturday Night Live, which featured Brian Williams and Feist. Brian Williams was fantastic, especially considering he's not an actor at all. I guess the Nightly News can prepare you to say anything on live television.

On Sunday morning, we went to Covenant UMC in Middlesboro, where several of the staff members attend church. (We usually go to the Hope UMC here in Frakes--sometime we'll have to blog about it!)

Then we headed to the town of Cumberland Gap, Tennessee, for lunch at Webb's Country Kitchen. Needless to say, it was great. And they have live music on Saturday nights, so we may be returning!

After lunch, we headed toward Cumberland Gap National Historical Park for a tour of the Gap Cave. When the group gathered together, we strapped on our giant yellow flashlights and hiked half a mile to the cave entrance. The guy in the park ranger outfit in this photo below is, in fact, a park ranger--our tour guide Scott.


It was pretty incredible inside. As you can see from this photo, Eric was pretty amazed.

Below are some photos of various cave scenes--stalagmites and stalactites and such.

This is called "Cleopatra's Pool."

And there was wildlife in the cave, too! Here are a bat and a salamander.

After coming out of the cave, we headed back to Cumberland Gap for some ice cream and a little antique store browsing.

We finished the day by heading back home so Eric could watch the football game between the Patriots and Colts. This didn't have the outcome we hoped, but it didn't spoil our day.

There are a couple of other things that need to be mentioned. Because Eric's birthday fell on daylight savings time, he managed to have 25 hours of birthday, instead of the standard 24--pretty cool. Also, he got several cards and packages during the week leading up to his birthday, which made for a lot of fun! (Grandma Yetter, if you're reading this, Eric did NOT wait until his birthday to open your package.)