Now that it's the end of the summer, I finally feel like posting about our Smoky Mountain trip in July. I'm a little behind schedule but I really have had a good excuse, so bear with me please:-)
This was a strange trip. It seemed like we weren't really destined to get a vacation this year. As you all know, I had spent most of the year just trying to survive. I think the only thing that got me through (besides my girls) was vacation. I'm a restless soul and I love to travel. I MADE myself get well so I could spend this time with my family. At the last minute (the week before we were to leave), Ben was told that he had a manditory leadership meeting in Alabama even though he was already scheduled to take vacation. It was a hard decision but the trip was already paid for, so we decided to go without him. Besides, my brother and his family (all accept for Lauren) were going and they'd already scheduled off work. So did Amber. There was really no way to reschedule. It sucked for Ben and Savannah. Savannah decided to go with us anyway (without her dad) because she'd already taken off work also. To complicate things even more - Danielle's boyfriend Zac had gotten into a fight with his mom and wassn't able to go. We found this out 1 day before we were ready to take off. Danielle was bummed out but she got over it. Sooo... at 4 a.m. on the 20th of July, 2 car loads of us took off to the mountains! We arived at our CRAZY nice cabin, The Wild Daisy, at Cobbly Nob resorts in Gatlinburg - around 3 p.m because traffic SUCKED and I forgot the best route to get to our cabin. Keith's patience was wearing thin with mine and Amber's navigational skills by the time we got there! I guess the funniest part of the ride down was watching Keith trying not to road rage! lol We were so tired.
This is the view from on top of one mountain overlooking Gatlinburg TN - The Great Smoky Mountains! I never get tired of this. It's great because even the kids were excited and in awe. I got to see the mountains through new eyes when Keith, Amy and Aubrie looked at them for the first time. We could definitely see why they're called "Smoky" (the Indian spelling).
On the first full day in the mountains, Keith and Amy went to take care of all of the paper work involved with their upcoming wedding. I took ALL of the kids to hike through the mountains, scout some water falls and just appreciate nature.
This is a picture of me and my new niece, Aubrie at Laurel Falls. We spent a couple hours here just playing in the waterfall. Aubrie had a blast because she'd never played in a waterfall before. She did have a pretty hard time walking on the slippery rocks. She fell pretty hard one time, but so gracefully that she was able to save her digital camera from smashing on the ground! Yay Aubrie!
As usual, Amber and Danielle were the thrill seekers at Laurel Falls too. They made it most of the way up the slippery, wet rocks without falling.
We all saw a black bear climbing a tree on the way to the falls but we couldn't get a clear enough picture. Last year, Amber and Danielle got right IN the mama bears face to take pictures! Genious children I have, eh? Thank God, they didn't get close enough this year.
After we trecked back from Laurel Falls, we found a little roadside park at the foot of the mountain and we stopped for lunch. I love this picture because this is the place where the older girls played house in the water with the 3 younger girls. They had so much fun pretending that the big rocks were their apartments and a smaller rock was their cell phone. They even found a crawfish and pretended that it was the lobster they were going to have for dinner that night. It was cute to see one of them on their rock cell phone, calling all of the others to invite them to their apartment for a lobster dinner party! Their imaginations fascinate me:-) It was just so nice to relax and enjoy them.
(Savannah and Danielle are in the back - Hannah, Aub and Julia are in the front row).
On our way back to the cabin, we found a roadside waterfall that seemed impossible to get to because you had to cross the river down a mountain. OF COURSE, Amber wanted to try - because she's such a thrill seeker. Or she THINKS she is. Which brings me to my next picture...
I had to take pictures of Amber trying to get to that waterfall. It wass so funny because once she got into the river, I heard this LOUD SCREECHING scream coming from Amber. My heart jumped out of my throat. I thought she'd been bitten by a snake! It turns out that a crawfish pinched her toe. You'd have thought she was being killed! Pretty funny coming from someone who claims to be afraid of NOTHING! lol
BTW... She really DID make it to the waterfall.
This is (left to right) Julia, me, Danielle,Aub and Hannah - Julia's best friend. Hannah goes everywhere with us. We were waiting along side the road for Amber to swim through the dangerous crawfish waters! lol
We were pretty tired when we left the mountains and actually couldn't wait to get back to the cabin and chill in the hot tub with our strawberry daquaries (the kids had virgin daquaries of course). We slept pretty good that night.
On day 2, we packed up the family and spent a very expensive day at Splash Country, in Pigeon Forge TN. We had a great time and got to ride MOST of the rides before it started to rain. They were so nice at Splash Country though because they gave us rain checks (good for a whole day) even though we were only rained out for 1/2 hour before the park closed. We were ready to go home anyway. The worst part of the day was trying to leave in the disorganized mess of traffic in the parking lot. People were seriously trying to kill each other.
Notice the sign to the left? I believe it say's "location station"? They have these things set up for kids to put their armbands under this little detector that tells them where their parents are if they happen to find themselves lost. The MOST hillarious thing about the Splash Country day was when my brilliant 24 y/o daughter (who's in college, btw...) convinced us ALL that these were "LOTION stations". She really believed that these little booths dispensed sunscreen for free. We believed her because we really didn't read them closely. We just thought Dolly Parton's people were being extremely generous because they charged such outrageous prices for their tickets. Imagine my surprise when I realized that I would have to indeed PURCHASE a $15 bottle of Hawaiin Tropic! lol I wonder why I still take her word for ANYTHING. lol
Day 3 - My brother gets married and I miss the wedding (details in a previous post). After the wedding, Keith and Amy decide to do something with Aubrie by themselves to celebrate being a family for the first day. Amber, Savannah, Danielle, Julia, Hannah and I decide to go into Gatlinburg TN to see the sights. It's a busy, touristy little town filled with cool things to do and LOTS of shopping. Our first stop was The Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies. You probably can't tell by my extremely amatuer picture, but there is a diver in this aquarium. It was pretty cool.
We were able to stand on this moving escalator that went under the aqurium. This is the bottom of the beautiful sawfish. I wish I could have gotten a good picture of the sharks. This was pretty cool though.
While exploring and deep in thought, I heard someone yelling my name from up above. Apparently, Amy and Keith had the same idea! It was cool to meet up with them for lunch. Cute little rain poncho's eh? lol At least my group of kids made it into this place before the storm! lol
Here's Amber trying to pick up some kind of sea creature. I don't like slimy fish so I wouldn't touch it. Yuk!
This is Julia, Hannah, Savannah and Danielle in front of the Great White Shark mouth like the one in the movie Jaws. We took this picture for my MIA niece Lauren, who is TERRIFIED of sharks and still believes that they reside in swimming pools and fresh water lakes! lol She used to think that if she left the water running in the bath tub, a shark would come out of the spout! lol We missed her terribly on this trip. She used to travel with us all of the time but now, it seems, she can't be away from her boyfriend long enough to do fun stuff with us anymore. I hate when they start growing up!
I'm not really sure what night I took the girls back to Gatlinburg to walk the streets at night. Anyway, we went to eat at Bubba Gump Shrimp. It was a little dissappointing. The service was horrible and the food was only mediocre. It was fun just saying we were there though.
When we needed our waiter, we had to put up the "Run Forrest Run" sign.
When we needed the bill, we had to put up the "Stop Forrest Stop" sign. This did NOT insure that we'd actually GET service! lol The thing that really pissed me off about here is that they didn't offer to help clean up the mess when Hannah knocked her iced tea over onto a lady and her table. HOW EMBARRASSING! Amber and I had to clean up the lady's purse, the lady and the floor because the waiter wouldn't even OFFER to help! I couldn't believe it.
Julia laughed so hard she
cried when mommy had to feed her! lol (I know, I'm evil) Anyway, she ordered a really expensive dish and wasn't told that it was going to be a spicy hot dish. Nowhere in the description said that it was going to be hot. I made Julia think she was going to have to eat the whole plate of food and it was so hot she was crying! After a few bites, I told her I was only joking. You know, they wouldn't give her another plate of food that wasn't spicy hot? They just let us pay for it. I think she must have drank 5 huge glasses of iced tea that night!
After our bad experience at Bubba Gump Shrimp, we went to burn some more money at an arcade. Here's Amber shooting some hoops. She used to play basketball in high school and is still pretty good at it:-)
We finished off the night by pigging out on ice cream at Baskin Robbins. Notice Julia and Aubrie's matching shirts? They're the first of many matching items that they had to have. I'm so glad they hit it off so well. Now they're like lifetime cousins.
This was so cool! My mom hid some money in my car for us all to be able to do something fun together. We chose the Gatlinburg Sky Lift. We took our trip on the last day that Keith, Amy and Aubrie were there. They thought it was beautiful. I'm glad we chose this:-) Thanks Mom!
I had these shirts made for the little girls to remember their trip together. I gave it to them on the last day that Aubrie was with us. It was sad to see them go. Keith and Amy cooked for us every day that we were there (at least breakfast) so we got spoiled. Now we'd have to cook breakfast, lunch and dinner for ourselves! lol Seriously, we missed them for a lot more than just the cooking:-)
On our first day without Keith and his family, we went horseback riding through the mountains. It was fun because it was an unguided trail which meant that we had a lot of freedom with our horses. Look how goofy Danielle looks trying to ride her horse. You can definitely tell that she's not meant to be a rancher! We had so much fun here though.
These were the mountains as we saw them from a top our horses. I'm not sure what I did to my camera in order to come out with this color... Who knows... But again, it was breathtaking!
Me and Julia with Hannah looking disgusted in the background:-)
After horseback riding, we went to another roadside park inside Cades Cove. This is Hannah enjoying her grapes. It was just so nice to be able to pull over and not be crunched for time. We took all the time that we wanted to. I'm not used to relaxing this way.
This is the trail leading to The Elijah Oliver Homestead in Cades Cove. I thought this was such a good picture of the girls on a semi long trek.
The two pictures on the right (and the one below to the right) are Amber pretending to be Carrie Ingles (sp?) on Little House on the Prarie. lol In the begonning of the show, it shows little Carrie running through a field and falling. Amber tried (pitifully) to imitate. She had the other tourists who were also visiting the Oliver Homestead laughing at her. I was cracking up! lol
After visiting the Elijah Oliver Place, we took a drive toAbrams Falls. This is also in Cades Cove. We saw so many deer and antelope. We even saw a bear running through a field. I did get a picture of the bear but it didn't turn out very good so I won't subject you to it:-) Savannah and I dropped Amber, Danielle, Julia and Hannah off to hike the Abrams Falls trail. Savannah was "too tired" to do it so she drove with me to the Cades Cove visitor center.
Savannah at an old chicken coup. There was a sign that said: WARNING SNAKES! She still wanted to get this picture for her dad.
After this, I drove for ANOTHER hour and a half through the Cades Cove traffic to circle back around and pick up the other girls. I can't say that I was enjoying the scenery at this point because I was SO tired. I still haven't fully recovered from the last surgery so it doesn't take me much. Savannah was no help because she slept the whole way. I was seriously ready for bed! lol
I will leave you with this beautiful trail in Cades Cove.
All in all, we had an awesome time. There were a few rough patches between Amber and I, but we got through them. It's just hard to do a huge family vacation when you're still sick, you know? I've decided that Amber is the most HARD HEADED kid in the world! Hmmm... Wonder where she got THAT from? Here's a clue... It wasn't from her dad! lol
If you're thinking of visiting the Smoky Mountains, DON'T go in July. After the fourth of July through August, the traffic will drive you INSANE. We spent most of our time in traffic, no matter where we tried to go. Oh, and, Tennessee seriously needs some help with their mapping skills! Everyone we talked to (tourist wise) was having some deep issues with reading the maps there. I was glad to know that it wasn't just me, Amber and Keith! lol
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