Stopping For Religion

 

My mother-in-law is a fairly religious person and at one time considered giving up her two children after her husband died and becoming a nun. A nun talked her out of it and told her to care for her children and later I would marry one of those children so it worked out. Thus whenever we are near a grotto on one of our travels, we tend to stop for a look see.

After the family reunion trip to Pigeon Forge, we had four days to kill before another event that happened to fall at the tail end of our planned vacation days and so we drove south to see my brother who lives in Northeast Alabama. That trip south wasn't uneventful as I would like as we had a tire come loose and nearly fall off after nearly 10,000 miles of driving it since I had new tires installed last fall. Fortunately it was caught before it fell off and after a three hour delay, we were able to complete our trip.

The following day we drove to see this grotto which is called the Ava Maria Grotto. A brother of the nearby monastery filled his free time between shoveling coal into the steam boilers by building small replicas of famous buildings, sites, and locations. It became such a distraction that they moved it all to be near the entrance of the monastery complex in an abandoned stone quarry that had been used to build many of the buildings. In total he built several hundred miniatures that are now on display.

I could probably spend a full day if I were to look at each and every replica model there but it was hot and being fair skinned, I ended up lingering only in the shady areas and just took quick pictures to admire afterwards during the sunnier stretches of the quarry walls. 

Everywhere you looked, something just jumped out at you. Many of the sites or buildings I had heard about but never seen, some I have never heard about either. But a few were of buildings I have visited in my past. Most were of places that had some sort of religious significance but a few were just for fun. The brother monk who built all these never visited most of the places and just built them from photographs.

The brother monk only stood about five feet tall and so the only full size statue was one of himself which I'm guessing someone made after his death and can be seen above. 

Finally, a grotto stop wouldn't be complete without a picture of the actual grotto in the center of all the miniature models.

At the end of the path that circled the grotto was a gift shop where we did buy some "Prayerful Pretzels" to snack on while driving and some Monk Sauce seen above which I did not purchase. 

Although most people saw the grotto and left, we were free to walk around so we checked out the monk's chapel which was quite impressive in it's simplicity.

Where the monks entered in for their prayers however was gated off from the rest of the chapel.

In one of the many alcoves we found some candles which we lit two for in remembrance of our deceased parents, my mom and my wife's father.

Back on the road, we drove another 15 minutes up the road for a return trip to the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament which we visited several years ago during the Covid years. I am always impressed with this large courtyard leading up to the shrine and how many visitors it must have during other times of the years. Both times we have been here there has only been a handful of other visitors around. 

After seeing my staying two nights with my brother, we headed north, without tire issues this time, to Ohio where we spend a couple nights in the Columbus area visiting some acquaintances and then headed east to the Chicago area where we helped a couple celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary and send my mother-in-law off on a trip to Alaska with a friend of hers. Finally after 10 days on the road, we made it home to a garden full of vegetables needing picking and a lengthy list of things needing to be done before our next schedules vacation 10 days later.