What Do Hog Scalders and Owl Pellets Have In Common?

Both played an important role in our second day of madness and mayhem in the mountains!

Best to recap the day in pictures.....

First we headed over to Mountain City, Ga to the Foxfire museum and heritage center.   We started out hiking up a trail to visit some pre-civil war cabins.



Apparently we weren't very subtle.   Because these people here came up about the same time we did and set out on the same tour as us....but they took off down a different trail quickly and we never saw them again.



Their loss.  Because they could have seen how a hog scalder really works.  We had the perfect candidate to re-enact the scene for us at the first cabin.

[caption id="attachment_2354" align="alignnone" width="199" caption="Stuart standing in a hog scalder. He ain't skeered."][/caption]

Next we found the chapel.  A place for peaceful, quiet reflection.



Isn't it sweet?  Doesn't it seem to invite quiet meditation?  Only problem was, it had a bell.  With a long rope.  And six kids who couldn't get enough of the sound.



We also found a garden.  And promptly trampled through it.  It's probably been around since @1820.  And will never be the same again....



So then it was time to leave.  We started out down the trail and this was our view looking down.  See that little one all the way down there.... ??  Yes, he is doing exactly what it looks like he's doing.



We couldn't make this stuff up if we tried.

And as if that wasn't all enough excitement for us....

We came home and dissected owl pellets.

AKA, owl poop....owl vomit.  Doesn't really matter which end of the owl it came from.  All that matters is that we dug through it to see what the owl ate.

All in a day's work.