Wilma’s 69th

Sunday October 21, 2012

This morning was another late morning we were finally up and around by 9:00. We had a great breakfast of biscuits and gravy, sausage, eggs and cantaloupe. When breakfast was finished we all piled into the Rubble-mobile and headed back up the road to Ducktown. We stopped again at the place where the rafters and kayakers put in for the trip down the Ocoee River. It is a diversion dam where the water runs over the top of the dam into the whitewater portion of the river. At around 4 or 5 pm they shut a gate or open something and the water ceases to flow over the dam and the water level in the whitewater area drops substantially. Seems strange that they can turn the water on and off at will.

In Ducktown we stopped at a museum/historical site where the Copper Hill mine used to be. Mining operations in the area started in the 1850s and continued until 1987 when the last mine shut down. The museum was closed but some of the equipment was there to look at. It must have been quite an operation. While in Ducktown we located City Hall. We’ll go back and ask some questions tomorrow. We also located a funeral home where we can ask some more questions about the Threewit Cemetery.

We drove back out route 68 to New Stansbury Road, turned right, drove 2.3 miles, turned left and went up the hill about 100 yards into the Threewit Cemetery. Barney had looked around briefly yesterday, but to no avail. The cemetery is kind of overgrown with waist high weeds, including beggars lice, these little flat seed things about as big as the head of a match that stick to your clothes and have to be pulled off one at a time. There were tons of them. Anyway we all walked around looking and stomping down weeds. At last we found 3 small marble markers about 5 inches by 12 inches that just said “THREEWIT”. They looked like they had been placed recently by descendants or by a historical society. They were there in a horizontal row about 6 feet apart, toward the back of the cemetery. We will ask at city hall and the funeral home if there is any additional information on the cemetery.

We drove back toward route 68 and turned left at a street sign that read “TREEWITT”. We bounced up the steep gravel road that Barney had walked up yesterday to a spot where another gravel road angled off to the left to what we thought should be Threewit Mountain. Barney walked up the road to a house that had a 4 car garage blocking the road but he could not rouse anyone to find out if the house was on Threewit Lane. Maybe city hall will have some answers on Threewit Mountain tomorrow also. 

We headed back to the Parksville RV Campground where we are spending our 3^rd night. It is a nice campground with power hook-ups, nice showers and a dump station. We had an excellent dinner of potatoes baked over charcoal in a fire pit, a big salad and left over BBQ chicken. We topped it off with dark chocolate brownies in celebration of Wilma’s birthday. It was another good day and everyone was in the cave and probably the bed by 7 o-clock.

Good night from the Bed Rock Bunch.