Rogers Family Vacation: Day Three

On day three of our vacation to Chattanooga, we actually ventured away from the city. After about an hour and a half ride, we arrived in Sweetwater, Tennessee, home of The Lost Sea Adventure. This was probably what I was most excited for. Growing up, it seems like every vacation that my family ever took, we did a cave tour. I always loved it. I'm not sure I even realized Paul had never been in a cave before! What a deprived childhood!
Well, upon our entrance into the cave, it appeared that two of our party were a bit nervous. Don't let those smiles fool ya; it's in the eyes.
Nathanael's nerves continued to get the best of him for the first half of the tour,
but as we got closer and closer to boarding the boat in the underground lake, he started to loosen up and get excited.
Although this particular cave doesn't have very many impressive cave formations, the lake certainly makes it worth the visit. And our guide made the tour enjoyable with his humor. At one point he told us he was going to turn out the lights so that we could experience total darkness. Holy moly! That was crazy! He said that if you stayed like that for 2 weeks, you would go blind because your retinas would be working so hard to find light that it causes a violent vibration in the back of the eye and causes blindness. I don't know if this is true or not. I googled it and couldn't really seem to find a sufficient answer. But, I do know that in the few minutes he left the lights off, I felt claustrophobic and my eyes started to hurt. Paul felt so uncomfortable that he pressed the buttons on his iphone just to be able to see some light. I guess we could have gotten Nathanael to march around to provide us with some relief, since his shoes light up when he walks. So anyway, total darkness (which, by the way, can only be experienced in a cave or one other place, though I can't remember what he said) is neat to experience once, for like a minute, but more than that would be complete torture.
After that fun little episode, we arrived at the lake and loaded onto two small boats. The lake is really impressive and the boys loved watching the fish. They keep it stocked with trout and during the tours they feed the fish, causing them to go crazy, jumping out of the water and such.
After leaving the cave, we stopped for lunch, which was less than desirable, and then headed for some yummy dessert at the Mayfield Dairy.


Typically when we get ice cream we all share one or two items, instead of each of us getting our own. I'm not sure why we didn't do that this time. We must have just been like kids in an ice cream store, wanting everything we could get. I guess I didn't realize how much ice cream we were each truly eating, and unfortunately this would come into play later in our journey back to Chattanooga.... But we certainly did enjoy our treats; the boys both got birthday cake (SO good) and Paul and I both had O'Charley's Carmel Pie. Then it was on to the tour of the facility. In order to go into the factory, we all had to wear hairnets. Who knew hairnets could be so fashionable?
Or maybe they aren't.... Anyway, the tour wasn't terribly long, but it was still something different to do and pretty neat to watch some of the manufacturing process. We also learned that Great Value (or Walmart) milk is actually Mayfield, just minus one final step that Mayfield milk goes through. And if you're interested, the final step is for the milk to pass through some sort of vacuum machine that supposedly pulls out any smell or flavor in case the cow ate something like onions. I'll take my Great Value milk for $2 cheaper, thank you very much. Milk is milk, if you ask me.
After the tour, it was time to make the hour and half trip back to the hotel. About 40 minutes away from our hotel, disaster struck. And this is what that disaster looked like:
Sam started coughing. From an early age, that has always been his vomit trigger. So when he wouldn't stop, we knew it had the potential to end badly. I gave him some water to drink and he took a few sips and then started crying. "My tummy's empty. My tummy's empty." We were confused. Paul thought he was crying because he wanted to vomit but couldn't because he didn't have anything to vomit. Oh no, he just meant the opposite; his tummy was TOO FULL! Paul started commanding me to get a bag. Well, with all the chaos, I couldn't think of what was available to grab. I leaped into the backseat and grabbed the only bag I could think of- a grocery bag with a brand new, open bag of peanut M&Ms and a brand new, open bag of Skittles (such a sad waste). The bag caught some of the vomit, ruining the candy for no good reason, because I was too late and the vomit went all over my hands, Sam's clothes, his car seat, the floorboards, my camera bag, EVERYWHERE. It was not a happy time. But, my biggest concern after it was over, while Sam and I sat there in his puke, was not the terrible smell or how we were going to clean it up, but the sad look in his eyes. I just hope that he doesn't forever remember being yelled at for puking in the van, because he's more important than that.