The Great Smoky Mountains

Our road trip took us to nearby Tennessee to Gatlinburg, Dollywood and the Great Smoky Mountains. Gatinlburg was a bit hokey, but there was lots to do; ride the tram, alpine slides, eat out, ride the trolley bus and ski lift. Our favorite place for sure was the Smoky National Park. It was beautiful and reminded us of home, I can only imagine what the scenery will be like in Autumn!

We learned that the smokey effect is from the lush vegetation giving off moisture and other organic matter.




Mark took this picture:


Three years ago this same weekend we took a two week road trip to the Canadian Rockies and camped with Grant. It was a great trip! Those of you who know me well or have read my 100 list know that I am deathly afraid of bears starting on that trip I researched and read about bears, had nightmares, bought bear spray and bear bells and were sure every night we camped or wherever we hiked we would encounter a bear! No such luck, thank goodness! I did find myself at least wanting to SEE one, as we saw so much other wildlife. Well, within an hour of our trip to the Smokies, guess what we saw! A black bear, up in a tree! Unfortunately I left my telephoto lens at the hotel, so this poor picture will have to do as proof!



Dollywood
Our festivities started Friday at Dollywood. Yup-you that's right, Dolly Parton's theme park! It met my expectations of what it would be like, we spent the day, Grant had fun on some rides.

I cannot tell you how much this boy loves vintage cars.

Grant and Mark are up there somewhere!

The most exciting thing about this day was I noticed Gracie has a tooth!!! She's got one poking through on the bottom, we've been waiting with all this drooling!

These little lips...

These Two...


Cades Cove
Probably my favorite part of the trip was driving Cades Cove. It is an old farming loop that is open to cars as a one way drive. It was pretty busy, but way worth it! We saw a working water wheel and grinder in action, Grant loved that as well as sitting on the old tractor.








Does anyone want to hike to Maine?

Some of the trails were completely surrounded by very large rhododendron bushes, if they would of been in bloom, what a sight that would be!


One tired little Ranger!

Nashville

Yesterday afternoon we headed up to Nashville. We visited the worlds only full scale replica of the Parthenon, walked around downtown listening to the various country bands play, ate at Hard Rock and shopped at the Grand Old Opry!

Our Weekend

My parents are flying back west as I type, Grant was pouting in the car on the way home from the airport. We had a great visit and a fun weekend in Chattanooga. The following posts are from our adventure......

Battle of Chickamauga

We did a car tour of the Battle of Chickamauga. The site was covered in memorials to the numerous (over 30,000) lives that were lost at that battle during the civil war.

Ruby Falls

Ruby Falls is an underground waterfall in a cave. We took a walk through the cave to the falls, it was cool to see all the underground formations.

Rock City on Lookout Mountain

Rock City was interesting. It was a series of trails that went through these cool rock formations. It actually was in some way a bit like Enchanted Forest (those from Corvallis know what I'm talking about). This weekend happened to be "fairyland" weekend, so there were various fairies and other characters along the trail-Grant enjoyed it! At one point you could look out and see seven states...although it was too hazy from the forest fires to see too far.

Footbridge, Tennessee River

We walked across the longest footbridge in the US in downtown Chattanooga. It was a hot day and Grant enjoyed some water fountains along the river!

Chattanooga Choo-Choo!

"All aboard!!!"

We stayed at the Chattanooga Choo-Choo in actual train cars....Grant LOVED it! He was the "engineer" and enjoyed yelling for the people to come and could of spent all day playing on the big steam engine!