Home from the Smoky Mountains

We are home & in "vacation recovery mode." David is back to taking afternoon naps (we'll see how long this lasts!) and Rachel has rediscovered toys she hadn't played with in weeks. Our vacation to Gatlinburg and the Smoky Mountain National Park was incredible. It's late, I'm tired (also in recovery mode), so I'll make my first entry on the trip and then head to bed early tonight.

We arrived on Sunday and spent the late afternoon & evening at the cabin. We had a 2 bedroom 2.5 bath log cabin with a pool table room in the lowest level and a hot tub. It had a wrap-around deck on all 3 levels. We were clearly on the top of a mountain and the view was awesome. The kids spent most of their time on the swing. They loved the cabin and probably would have been content if we had just stayed at it all day everyday.

It rained A LOT the entire week. Every evening we'd tell the kids here's what we'll do tomorrow if it's sunny and here's what we'll do if it's raining. They both just went with the flow, but there were a couple days of constant whining about what they wanted to do. On Tuesday, if I had heard "I want to go ride the cars" (aka, go-carts) one more time, I thought I was going to jump off the mountain. Anyway....

On Monday the weather was decent, cloudy with possible rain, but we were optimistic since it was our first full day of vacation. Rachel and I went horseback riding in the mountains while Greg & David took a hike. Rachel LOVED her horse named Cadillac. I rode a 16 year old named Hard Rock. She really didn't want to get off the horse, until she saw Daddy waiting for us - then, she wanted to jump off, run to him, and tell him everything about the horse. Of course it started to sprinkle just as that adventure came to an end.

David was asleep in the car after the hike he took with Daddy, so we drove into the park and found a spot for a picnic lunch since the rain had stopped. We spent the remainder of the day driving around a portion of the park in misty weather and then grilled out dinner at the cabin.

The Smoky Mountains are very wooded and lush - considerably different than being in the Rocky Mountains. We spotted a bear on our first drive on Monday afternoon. We were amazed to see so many waterfalls, rivers, creeks, and bubbling rapids.

This last picture just makes me want to run upstairs and snuggle my son. We captured so many wonderful pictures of him on this vacation. He just loves being outside - the simple beauty of nature makes him so happy....well that and go-carts. I picked this picture so my Dad could see that David chose to wear socks with his sandals "just like Grandpa does" after the rain boots came off.