HOME AGAIN, SUNNY BUT STILL COLD.

We are home again.  Had a great time, and enjoyed the town of Franklin, NC, to it's fullest extent - antiques and all.  While the boys went snowboarding, we girls did our own thing.  It was cold, though, so we had to walk around town wearing heavy coats and gloves.  Here is a picture of my sister, Janet on the porch of the house where we stayed.

VISITING IN FRANKLIN, NC

My DH and I went to visit with our oldest daughter and her family at their cabin in Franklin, NC.  It's such a pretty, quaint town with loads of antique stores and intersting things to do.  On Saturday night we went to listen to country music on the town squary - sort of a tradition.  Today we went ruby mining at the Sheffield Mine just outside of Franklin.  Let me tell you, mining is a dirty business!  I had one of my favorite casual outfits on, and I got brown clay mud all over my top.  Yuk!!  I hadn't really packed my suitcase for ruby mining, so I just went with what I had on - my bad!!  Cade got 2 "Rainbow Buckets" and found a lot of great and shiny geods and an arrowhead, while Laura and I sifted and strained and sl0pped all over looking for rubies and/or sapphires.  Both of us had two buckets of dirt each, and neither of us knew what we were looking for in all that mud.  Thankfully, there were a number of "helpers" who walked along a let you know if you had anything worth keeping.  We were thrilled to find a few tiny little rubies.  I even got one that is big enough to make a piece of jewelry out of!  While we were there the same man, Bob, got two "Honkers", which were large rubies - over 50 carats or so.  Apparently Bob mines all the time, because he showed us his loot from years past.  I must admit,  it was lots of fun, but it isn't going to make either one of us wealthy.  LOL!