I couldn't have asked for a better vacation. We took a little four day weekend and headed down to our cabin in paradise. I mean, check out this view!
But let me backtrack a little bit. We drove a little over 5 hours on Thursday night and stayed in a hotel. Friday morning we were off to finish the last 2 hours of our drive. While researching things to do, I came across a wine trail that began at the exit off the interstate and went all the way to Gatlinburg. I knew this would be the perfect way to start off our vacation! We hit 5 wineries in all and came back with 7 bottles of wine. We even got free wine glasses and a five piece wine set for stopping at all five wineries.
We were thinking that hitting all the wineries would take us all day. We are used to having to drive at least 20 minutes between each winery, and then spending at least 45 minutes to an hour trying the wines and drinking a glass before we moved on to the next winery. To our surprise, each winery was within a 12 mile strip. And because of some crazy Tennessee law- get with the program Tennessee!- they were not allowed to sell wine by the glass. So our hour stop at each winery turned into about 15-20 minutes.
For lunch we stopped by Smoky Mountain Brewery. Eric was in heaven and tried every beer he could.
Then we headed to our cabin to drop off our luggage. Our phones told us that our cabin was 10 miles from Gatlinburg. Translate that into mountain driving and you have 30 minutes. That was definitely something we had to get used to! Once we trekked up the mountain, we were pleasantly surprised by our little cabin. It was the perfect size for us, complete with a hot tub on the back porch overlooking a breathtaking view of the Smokies. We spent many hours sitting out on that porch soaking up the view.
Since we had so much time left in our day, we decided to head back to Gatlinburg and check out the aquarium. I loved seeing all the sea life. They even had a tunnel beneath the shark pool. Here's a few of my favorite pictures.
On Saturday, Eric had planned for us to go to Gatlinburg Sportsman's Club to shoot sporting clays! We were quite surprised when we arrived that instead of a "walking" sporting clays course like we were used to, we found a sporting clays course set up on a trap/skeet range. It made perfect sense- where in the world were they going to get all the open space they needed up in the mountains?? There were 15 different "stations" with different throws at each station. Stations were marked by hula hoops. We were kinda relieved we didn't have to walk all over, it made for a relaxing shooting experience. And the owner, Mike, was as nice as can be. We definitely recommend hitting this place up if you want to shoot while you are down by Gatlinburg.
That night, we went to the Lumberjack Fued dinner show. We were randomly assigned to the Dawson camp- which happened to be the winning the camp at the end of the night! All lumberjacks (and lumberjills) were real ESPN lumberjacks. The different competitions they did during the show were ones that they do during an ESPN competition. It was a fun show to watch and cheer on our side!
Sunday was dedicated to exploring the mountains. We had to get the tourist picture in front of the welcome sign!
We had looked up different waterfalls that we could hike to and decided upon Grotto falls, since it was only about a 3 mile round trip hike. Well nothing here has a real address; everything says to turn at stoplight #8, or to stop at parking lot 5. We stopped at the 5th parking lot we found and saw a trail sign with Grotto Falls on it. About halfway into our hike, we knew that we had parked in the wrong place- this supposed 1.5 mile hike to the waterfall was taking waaaaaaay longer than it should. After we got back, we saw that we actually did a 7 mile round trip hike to the fall- talk about a workout!
The falls were beautiful! This is the only waterfall in the mountains that you can walk behind, so of course we got our picture taken back behind the falls.
We also enjoyed sitting and relaxing on the large rocks just under the big falls. The ice cold water made for a cool place to take a break.
After we had cooled off for a while, we decided to make the trek back down the mountain. As we were leaving the falls, I noticed a white butterfly flying around us. I have been seeing a white butterfly a lot lately- there has been one in the flowers by our house. I also saw one while we were shooting on Saturday. I've never had a camera handy- until today. I knew I had to stop and take a picture. You may be wondering why, as it's just a simple white butterfly. But as I looked up what it meant to see a white butterfly, I was greeted with the most beautiful meaning- a white butterfly signifies a loved one that has passed away. I couldn't imagine a better way for Eric to spend his first Father's Day than with a physical reminder that Ian is always with us.
I had told Eric that after our hike I wanted to go on a driving trail through the mountains to see if we could see any bears. Well we were about a mile away from the lot we had parked in. We just passed the last parking lot before ours when we found a huge pile of poop on the trail. We instantly knew it was bear poop- it was too big for any other animal and we could see seeds and berries in the still steaming pile. We were slightly nervous, but reassured ourselves that the trail was so close to the road that a bear wouldn't stick around for long. Eric was ahead of me as we rounded one of the many curves in the trail when he suddenly stopped and put his hand back, almost as if he was trying to protect me from something. As I finished coming around the curve, I saw what he was staring at- a black bear only 30 yards ahead of us on the trail!!! I wish I would have had my camera out, but at that moment all we could think about was getting as far away from that bear as possible. We slowly backed up until we were out of its sight and then ran towards the trail to the parking lot. We decided to walk on the road the rest of the way to our car. On our path, we did see the bear continue walking through the woods. I don't think my heart stopped racing until we were in the safety of our locked car. I told Eric that we didn't need to go on a driving trail anymore- I had seen as much bear as I wanted to see for the rest of our vacation.
This morning was our last morning in the mountains and I convinced Eric to get up with me to watch the sunrise. Unfortunately where the sun was coming up was covered with clouds, but it was still a beautiful thing to watch. After the sun was up, we finished packing up and hit the road. While I do love a vacation, nothing beats the feeling of being home- and a big slobbery kiss from your puppy.
No comments:
Post a Comment