Spring Break Trip - Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Staying in Pigeon Forge at the Inn at Christmas Place.
We ate breakfast at the hotel.
The weather was cool, but beautiful.
We spent most of the day in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The mountains in the park had received over a foot of snow yesterday. We had planned on going up to Clingman's Dome today, but the road was closed due to all the snow. At the visitor's center they said it could be days before the road reopened. This had me concerned because one of the goals for the trip was to get the kids into North Carolina - and the mountain route was closed. We decided to do the Laurel Falls hike. It was a beautiful hike, with snow coating the trees. When we got to the falls, someone asked us if we were from Nappanee (they had noticed Kristi's NorthWood sweatshirt.) They were from Nappanee too. Their daughter is in the photo slide show. After the Laurel Falls hike, we did the 11 mile driving loop in the Cade's Cove area. This is a historic area with some buildings that still stand from nearly 200 years ago. Landen was fascinated by the water wheel and mill. There is a gravel road from Cade's Cove that went to North Carolina, but it was closed too. However, I found out at the Cade's Cove visitor center that the other road to North Carolina (the aforementioned mountain road) had reopened. This solidified our plans for tomorrow.
On the way back to the hotel we stopped and ate a late lunch/early supper at Corky's BBQ again. We sat in the same booth and had the same waitress as yesterday. AND Landen slept through the entire meal both days we went to Corky's. He's heard us talk about how much we liked Corky's, but he doesn't remember it since he was asleep. He thinks the Japanese steak house we eat at tomorrow is called Corky's. I liked Corky's so much again I bought a Corky's t-shirt. I think it's my favorite shirt now. I told Kristi I was going to wear it for Easter. She told me she already had a shirt picked out for me though.
We swam when we got back to the hotel.
Makenna, Landen and I went to the Magic Beyond Belief show in the evening. It was excellent. The actual show part was comperable to a Vegas magic show. (Better than Lance Burton and not as good as Sigried and Roy - the two I have seen.) I do wish the show would have had a little less talking and intermission time and had just stuck to the magic aspect of the show.
While we went to the magic show Kristi and Kylee went miniature golfing. Pigeon Forge must have 50 miniature golf courses. They seemed to enjoy the one they chose.
Photos from Wednesday, April 8, 2009
2 comments:
We walked up to Laurel Falls a few years ago. Andrew was in our backpack so I guess it was 4 years ago. When we got to the top there was a wedding up there. Everyone was in full garb too! That is a hike in a wedding dress. My favorite memory though was of our then 6 year old son, the thinker. He wouldn't get out of the van because we had just seen the stuffed bears in the visitors center and was sure we would encounter some on the hike. I reasurres him by saying "daddy will protect us". He replied " he doesn't have a gun or knife!" so I am not going." We pried him out and we all had a great time.
tia
We saw the stuffed bear in the visitor center too. Landen was positive we would see a bear too. But, he really wanted to see a bear! We didn't see any until we stopped at the zoo on the way home though.
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