Gem Mine & Antique Mall...

Another of our stops along the way to Knoxville was at a rather special (or spooky) looking Gem Mine and Antique Mall...

As you pull up in the car park you see (as well as a couple of big plastic dinosaurs) lots and lots of big colourful rocks...

I'm not sure if they were actually 'gems' or just brightly painted bits of rock, but there were a LOT of them. Then a little further along there was a section where you could buy a bucket full of gravel, soil and rubbish and go prospecting...

They had made a raised stream were you could go panning for gold, a nice man asked us 'Y'all wanna doo sum minin'?!' - Abi was pretty tempted!

Next to the Prospectors Paradise was the 'Anitque's Mall' which in proper English means 'old barn full of tat' - but just like with the mining, I'm sure if you sifted through all the stuff long enough you'd find something valuable...

 It was blummin' huge inside and they did have some really interesting stuff in there - including an old Jack Daniels barrel and lots of nice old signs (and some modern replicas too which I'm pretty sure they were trying to sell as antiques).

We couldn't stay too long though, we had a date at a very magical place that we were running late for...