"Daddy. Daddy. The bugs have flashlights."
It was our second night at Elkmont, about 9:15, and Nico was supposed to be in his sleeping bag. Instead he was standing on the campground road in his pajamas and river shoes, pointing at the dark under the trees where a dozen small green-yellow lights were blinking on and off over the creek. He'd never seen a firefly. Miami kids mostly don't.
We got home from the Smokies on Wednesday, and while the full trip report and the receipts are still coming, I wanted to write down the small things from the first week before they blur.
The bugs with flashlights
These were ordinary fireflies, not the famous synchronous ones. That show happens in early June at Elkmont, and you need to win a lottery for a parking pass, which we didn't try for. Nico didn't care. To a five-year-old, a regular firefly is the best thing that has ever happened.
After dinner every night we walked the dark campground loop with headlamps off. He caught one in cupped hands on the third night, looked at it for about a minute and let it go when Maya told him it would be scared. Maya, who is 9 and knows things, explained that fireflies are beetles. Nico now calls them flashlight beetles, and he refused to go to bed before 10 on any night we were there.
Maya's salamander
The Smokies are known for salamanders, and Maya had read about them before the trip. On our second morning she spotted one in the shallow edge of the Little River, a brown one about the length of her finger, sitting still in the clear water. The park asks visitors not to move rocks, because that's where salamanders live, so we didn't touch anything. We just lay on a warm rock and watched it.
She drew it in her nature journal with her watercolor pencils, then drew the river, then drew Nico, who was not standing still and came out a little blurry. Under the drawing she wrote, "Salamander capital of the world. Saw ONE."
The long drive went better than I feared
Day two was 8.5 hours from Ron and Linda's in Ocala to Elkmont, on Father's Day. I'd been dreading it. Nico fell asleep twice, as he always does, once before the Georgia line and once after lunch. Maya listened to two audiobooks with her headphones. We stopped three times. Maya gave me a card she'd made in the back seat, with a drawing of me in my faded navy cap holding a fishing rod, which I don't own. I'm keeping it anyway.
We came in through Townsend instead of Gatlinburg, the way my dad did when I was 11, and rolled up to our site with about an hour of light left.
A Junior Ranger oath and a missing shoe
Both kids worked through their Great Smoky Mountains Junior Ranger booklets on rainy afternoons in the tent, and on Thursday we drove to the Sugarlands Visitor Center so a ranger could check them. Nico raised his right hand so high for the oath that his whole body leaned sideways. He repeated every word slowly and clearly, like he was being sworn into office. He wore the badge on his shirt for the rest of the trip, including in the shower at the cabin.
Now the shoe. On Tuesday, Nico was wading at the edge of the river when one of his water shoes slipped off and floated away. I chased it downstream for about 30 yards in water that was colder than anything in Florida and lost the race. He went the rest of the week in his sneakers and one water shoe, which he insisted on wearing anyway, "so it doesn't get lonely." That's one shoe per trip, right on schedule.
The nights helped everyone. Lows were in the low 60s, and both kids slept ten hours a night in the tent, which they never do at home. Even Dana, who hates being cold, said a hoodie and a sleeping bag felt about right.
We're home now, and Pickles has forgiven us. Nico has a jar with holes in the lid by the back door, for any fireflies that turn up in Kendall. He checks the yard every night after dinner. So far, nothing. He keeps checking.
