On our recent trip down to North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, we saw quite a few split rail fences. I've always wondered how you get started putting one of those together. I suppose I could Google it, but I'd rather just try to figure it out. Anyhow, here are a couple of the fences we saw.
This first one is in front of the John Oliver cabin in Cades Cove, which is located in the Tennessee section of the national park. I wanted to go there because I am a distant relative of John Oliver. From conversations with my family, I've determined that he was my Great Grandfather Oliver's Great Uncle. I know that's a little off the beaten track family-wise, but still it was fun standing inside a place where I actually do have a family connection.
Here I am standing on the porch.
It's a small cabin -- one room down and one room up. But it sounds like they managed to make do.
In my Facebook post when I was trying to figure out the relationship between John Oliver and me, I got a post from my aunt Wanda that I made me laugh. She said:
The first time we went to Cade's Cove, Bunni (Wanda's daughter and my cousin) was about 10 years old. She needed to find the restroom, but apparently there weren't any. So she went back to the car and we eventually found her there with this poem she had written:
Great, Great, Great Uncle John,
where in the world has your outhouse gone?
I've looked in the cabin,
I've looked all around,
but that dadblasted outhouse
just couldn't be found!
This other fence was on the property of the cabin we rented. There were significantly more rooms in our cabin than in John Oliver's and we were very comfortable there. There was a full outhouse inside on both floors. So we managed to make do very well indeed.
