Earlier this week I sat down with our scrapbook for our third annual birthday trip, since I’m reminiscing my way through some of those early trips. Our 2nd annual birthday adventure, to the tulipless Tulip festival, made us rethink the timing of this tradition we’d begun. So for year three, we decided to push the vacation to mid-May and the destination was south instead of north. We hoped this would help us find some warmer weather. We also made it a five-day adventure instead of three, so we could drive farther.
And this is how we made our way
to Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg.
You know…this was a good
reminder of why I love scrapbooking. I laughed over so many things I completely
forgot about until I read the book! Like…we were caught in a traffic jam and
the guy in the SUV next to us changed his clothes while waiting to move. Or…arriving
for coffee at the same time two tour buses pulled in. Or…seeing a fox on the
side of the road. Or…that our drive took ten hours when it should have only
taken seven. Or…that on the first day in town, we had to go shopping for a belt
because Ryan forgot to pack his and his pants would not stay up. (That was a
funny picture!)
Here’s another great story I’d forgotten about entirely until
I read it. We stopped for a snack in Gatlinburg and ate in a little private
courtyard. Ryan relaxed so much, he fell asleep at our table. Ha! While he was
asleep, a lady walked up to me, handed me a paper with the sign language
alphabet on it, and motioned for me to flip over the paper. When I did, I saw a
request for money. I mouthed that I didn’t have any cash, and before I could
say more, she ripped the paper out of my hand and stormed off. Ryan slept
through the whole thing.
Funny stories aside, we learned
that this part of the country is very serious about its pancake houses, and you
can find one about every half mile. (And we did!)
I really wanted to have a proper adventure that scared me
just a little bit, but unfortunately, I chickened out. We found the sky lift
that went up the side of a mountain, but I could not fathom sitting in an open lift
riding up a mountain. I’ve regretted that choice ever since.
As a backup adventure, we had a
caricature drawn, and we still love this thing. (The blog version is edited, because
the artist really went crazy on the cleavage.) I think our lake house is the only
house where the picture hasn’t been displayed – because we ran out of wall
space!
I read on a sign that the
Tennessee/North Carolina state line was only 12 miles away, so I suggested we
check it out. What I did NOT know was that it was twelve miles up the side of a
mountain. It took a full hour to make that drive up the winding roads, but we
saw many beautiful things along the way!
This picture ended up being our
official travel map photo of Tennessee!
But my favorite thing about this
trip was falling in love with nature. Though it wasn’t my first time to see the
Smoky Mountains, it was my first time to explore them. And I completely
fell in love with our meander through the Cade’s Cove Loop and our hike to
Abrams Falls. We had quite a bit of rain on this trip, so we spent hours in museums,
an aquarium, and other inside adventures, but my favorite, favorite thing was
being outside.
I loved being down in the valley
with mountains stretching to the sky all around me. I loved walking into an old
church and wondering what sermons had been preached there back in the day. I
loved wandering through a cemetery, reading names on stones, and wondering
about the lives that had been lived there in this little piece of the world
that is now a tourist destination. I loved exploring old log cabins that once
held families.
I loved looking out over grassy
fields, watching deer graze, and hoping I didn’t see a bear. I loved picking my
way through trails. I just loved all of it.
This was the trip when finding
beautiful natural elements began to matter more to me than finding museums. And
we’ve followed that trend on many trips since!
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