The Event, Part One

 I'm currently in a sitting area in the Fall Creek Falls State Park Lodge in Tennessee. Now I do not know about you but I have never been in a State Park with a lodge like this. Or a lodge at all. It's a full-on hotel with rooms with balconies overlooking a lake and a restaurant with a cocktail bar (I shit you not) and it is pretty darn okay. We're in this sitting area waiting for our room because it wasn't ready when we got here a few hours ago. 
No worries. 
This state park is amazing. There are also cabins to rent and many camping and RV areas. There are the falls for which the park is named and there are hiking trails galore. Mr. Moon and I just went to the Nature Center where there were quilting, blacksmithing, log peeling demonstrations AND bluegrass music. 
Tennessee is awesome. 

This was part of a diorama. Of sorts. I had to take its picture.

Our drive here from Cave Spring, Georgia, was fast and easy. Well, it wasn't that fast because we're not speeding in any sense of the word. Now the drive from Lloyd to Cave Spring was HORRIBLE and I vowed never to go on another car journey again because I can't sit that long without being in torture. And yes, we did stop and walk around but if you ever want to reach a destination, you just can't stop every twenty minutes. 

But we did make it to Cave Springs and my Lord. It was a real experience. Some of it quite eerie. 

Here's where our room for last night was. 

It is not an old house. It is an old academy. Short article about it here. 
Not the happiest of histories. 
But the building was beautiful. The restoration is fantastic with very little defunkifying in it. It's set in a beautiful park where Cave Spring actually is. The cave spring. We did not explore that nearly enough. We are, after all, on a mission. 
Before the town was "founded" by white people, there was a large population there and in nearby areas of indigenous people, many of whom were slaughtered. Of course. And it is on the Trail of Tears.

So. There is that. The little town, however, is so picture perfect that I almost felt as if I was in some Ray Bradbury or Stephen King story about people visiting the sweetest little town imaginable and never being able to escape it because it was never real in the first place. 

May I just say? It is fucking charming. 

And a little weird.

Here are some pictures of the old academy which I'm going to start just calling a house. 

As I said, really lovely. 

I felt very much at home and we appeared to be the only people there which was fine with us. 
There were rooms everywhere. Bathrooms, too. There were two entirely suited out kitchens. A dining area. Several sitting areas. The furniture and rugs and artwork went so well with the house. It felt almost familiar.

And then that evening, when we got home from eating dinner, I was sort of just wandering around and what did I see but this?

A washing machine. Tucked behind that is a bathroom, to the side of it, another bedroom. 

And it hit me- this was so much like the house I dream of so often with all of its rooms and hallways and bathrooms and...yes, a washing machine to take care of all the laundry I am always somehow responsible for. 

Holy shit. 

Anyway, it's a day later from when I started this post and so I'll end this here. 
The Event has happened and all I can say is, Holy shit. Sometimes life will astound, amaze, and delight you and bring your heart to its knees. 
Such as now. 

Love...Ms. Moon