My Fall and blog break was short, fun, and full of adventure!
The day before we left for our camping trip to the NC mountains, our 6 year old was up all night vomiting, but everyone was well enough to travel up to the mountains on Thursday.  When we arrived at our camp site, my hubby got sick and we did not pitch our 8 person tent because he was getting rid of all the contents in his stomach (Yuck-O!).  We were thankful to be able to stay in the camper that my in-laws own and this was our saving grace Thursday evening because we were able to sleep, cook, and use the bathroom facilities in the camper.  Here is my hubby on Thursday evening (10/7/10) not feeling too good:
We finally made it to Emerald Village in Little Switzerland, NC where we explored the NC Mining Museum where the historic Bon Ami Mine is located.
We explored the Bon Ami Mine (Bon Ami is French for "Good Friend") with this self guided tour book.  "Feldspar (white) was the primary product of this mine, and was used by the Bon Ami Company as an ingredient for their polishing cleaner."  I had never heard of Bon Ami cleaning product, but it was advertised from the early 1900s to the 1960s before the mine shut down.  Bon Ami was a natural cleanser and did not scratch surfaces.  The product is similar to Comet, but it's all natural.  Bon Ami Company used a baby chick coming out of an egg for its mascot because the woman in the museum told me that a chick does not scratch during the first 2 or 3 days after coming out of its egg.  Here is a 1905 ad:


We are walking in the mine here.  It was like a big cave with lots of mine equipment and tools.  The black line on the wall is where the water level used to be before they started the preservation process and museum.

After we explored the Bon Ami mine, we went across the street to find gems at the Gemstone Mine.    Our kids always enjoy gemstone mining where they get to keep what they find! We got a 5 lb. bucket of ore, put them into square pans with a mesh net and then we put the pans into the cool water flumes where the kids found some of the 52 gems and minerals that are mined in this area.


It was during this part of our day that our littlest one started emptying her stomach contents and she wasn't feeling well so my hubby and her are resting while I attended to our other children.  Cupcake #4 eventually felt better later in the evening, but we were not sure if we should cut our trip short and head back home. We didn't know if all our family members would get the flu bug.  We decided to stay, hoping for the best.

In the evenings we lit campfires and roasted marshmallows and made S'mores.  This is always a peaceful time with my family as I sit holding our sick one and rest my eyes praying that no one else in our family will get sick!

Saturday (10/9/10)
We make it through the night with no one getting sick.  Praise God!  Although, our 10 year old did wake me up to tell me she was cold and her tummy hurt! Oh no! But, everyone was fine and we were off to meet my brother-in-law and his family at an apple orchard about an hour away from where we were camping.  We went to Grandad's Apples in Hendersonville, NC.


Each of the 5 markers were names of different tractors.  Here we found the International marker.

Then at each marker, we hole punched our card until we punched all 5 tractor names.  When we found all 5 we had to find our way out of the corn maze.  It took us about 40 minutes to walk through the maze and find all 5 spots and to find our way out.

My brother-in-law had his handy dandy Garmin to tell us which path we had taken.  When we came out of the maze we saw that we made a tractor pattern!  Cool!

Cupcake #4, #1, and #3 have fun with the cutouts and my Cupcake #2 in the green shirt in the background observes the llama.

What a fun, adventuresome weekend we had with our family!  It was definitely memorable for not exactly the best reasons, but we were all together enjoying this Fall season and for this I am thankful!

PS:  Happy 10-10-10 day! I would give our trip a 10 out of 10, despite all its craziness!