Laura and Grace just dropped me off at the house after we spent a weekend at The Camp. Estill Springs was lovely, and we enjoyed both laziness and work. Above is the wooden ramp my friends Johnny and Terry built in the '90's so that Granddaddy, who was starting to have problems getting around, could get down the hill from the driveway to his cabin.
The ramp had a bottom step, also wooden, that was starting to rot out. The square blocks in the foreground are marble slabs that the creek has washed downstream over the years. Most recently, the children incorporated them into part of their dam. With spring storms having washed away the dam, Laura and I hauled them up the hill from the river and replaced the rotten last step and added several stepping stones. La also replaced the handrail. We'll need to paint the ramp later this spring.
Laura really worked hard this weekend. She was determined to address the front porch, which needed some love, not to mention some paint. We plan to replace it after we replace the roof. She also bleached down the bathroom and vacuumed the house, including the screened porch, which really needed it. I put a coat of paint on the kitchen table, and dusted all of the very dusty surfaces in the living room. There's always work to do at the cabin, but every little bit helps.
I took a few snapshots along the creek this morning.
We started rebuilding the dam, but left a few gaps in it so that Jake and Joey and Sarah can close it off next time we're all there.
Behold, Loghenge! The logs you see here positioned around our fire pit came from a tree that fell parallel to the creek last spring, making it inconvenient to access the creek at our accustomed spot. We hired a crew to cut it into manageable logs that we could eventually turn into bonfires. They await their fate.
There are a lot of cool, old things at the cabin, and I thought I would share some of them here. This is the first. Grandmother Ogle, born Willie J. Spencer, once saw a cobbler's bench, and she decided she wanted one for the Camp. She had this one built, and during my lifetime it has never served as a work bench for a maker of shoes. Instead, it holds things of great interest to children, like cards for playing Concentration and Uno, and a kazoo, and an old lock.
My niece Grace, pictured below on the deck, built the rock castle pictured above around a little pool at the edge of the creek where her mother and aunt and I enjoyed the same sort of fun way back when we were her age. It is wonderful to see the next generation of kids play at the Camp!
Here's a view of the Camp from down at the creek.
Around these parts of East Tennessee, it is common to name roads after what is at the other end of them. To give a nearby example, the road known as Old Knoxville Highway on this end of it is known as Old Maryville Pike on the Knoxville end. Morganton Road begins near Foothills Mall in Maryville, but the only Morganton I know near here is Morganton, North Carolina, which is about three hours east of here on Interstate 40.
Erin's Food Files 
Image
