Tennessee- Horses, waterfalls, and Dukes Country Kitchen

Here we are in beautiful Crossville and Pikesville, Tennessee, enjoying a drive toward The mountains-destination, Fall Creek Falls. Driving what seemed like forever, getting pretty hungry and out in the middle of nowhere (or so it seemed) we see a cafe beside the road: Dukes Country Kitchen. Yes, we are sure it will be country cooking, delicious burgers-but why Dukes? Well, as soon as we walked in the door we were surrounded by John Wayne memorabilia! Posters and signs everywhere.

On the road again we finally found the park advertising the huge waterfalls. Oh yeah, this is September, the falls have shrank from huge to one tiny one, however, the park is beautiful. We went into the visitors center, saw lots of stuffed animals (our grandson wanted to know if they were real when we showed him the pictures) then walked outside, down the hill a little way and discovered a "swinging bridge". We walked across, bouncing and swaying with each step. Scary! It was a long way down.

Meanwhile, we are loosing daylight so climbed back into the car and headed on down the road. Next stop, the horse stable. Didn't expect to go riding but every ready for some fun adventure, we climbed on. This is all recorded on the video!

We rode for about an hour, through the woods, over muddy spots (it had rained a little the night before) and then headed back to the stable. As we approached the spot to dismount, I climbed off my horse first, then as Gary began to climb off his horse the saddle decided it wanted to scoot off too! Gary just held on to the saddle horn and allowed his body to roll off to the ground as the saddle carried him. His eyes were as big as saucers as he slowly fell off. However, he got right up and acted like the brave guy he is. I think he may have been a little sore by the time we reached home that night!