Great Smoky Mountains

For our summer vacation this year, we decided to load up the car and head to Gatlinburg, Tennessee to explore the Great Smoky Mountains.  My parents were joining us for the trip but decided to fly from Oklahoma instead of drive.  So we spent our Friday night in Knoxville to make it easier to pick them up from the airport the next day.  We thought we would drive all day Friday and have the evening in Knoxville but due to some extenuating circumstances, we didn't make it to Knoxville until 2am.  Saturday morning we slept in (as much as the kids would let us) and then headed to Tupelo Honey Cafe for brunch.  It was delicious.  Then we wandered around Knoxville Market Square, which is beautiful, and then of course hit up the local brewery. After that we made a couple stops on University of Tennessee campus in honor of our friends and then headed off for the airport.  The kids were SO excited to pick up Nana and Papa.

Now it was time to head off to Gatlinburg and check in to our home for the week the "Cabin".  Our cabin was in a great location and had plenty of space for our party of 6.

Day one we headed off to Fox Fire Mountain adventure park for the "Goliath" Ziplining tour.  I specifically picked this place because it had great reviews about the zipling but also because there was lots of other things to do for the kids and since we had the kids we had to go in two separate groups.  Micah and I went on the early morning tour while Nana and Papa went on the 11:30 am tour.

The Goliath tour did not disappoint. Our guides were excellent and highly entertaining. In total we did 7 different zips with the Goliath zip at 475 feet high and 1/2 of a mile long.  The last zip we were able to go freestyle which means do tricks, go upside down, etc.  Upside down was so fun! Pictures and videos will tell it better.

Did I mention FoxFire had a lot of different things to do?  They also had a Cider shop that gave free samples of their 13 different flavors.  It was so cute watching Jacob and Hailey "cheers" with their non hard cider.

On Monday, we decided to do the 11 mile loop drive through Cade's Cove.  The first settlements in Cade's Cove are somewhere between 1818 and 1823.  Some of the cabins and buildings still exist.  I had read and been told that this was the best place to see bears.  Unfortunately, we didn't see any bears :(.   One of our stops along the loop was at Abram's falls hike.  Before we started this hike I emphasized several times that this is a 5 MILE hike (with a 3 and 6 year old). But no one was willing to seem like the wimp so we all headed off on the hike.  Honestly, it is one of my favorite memories from the trip.  Partly because I was just so impressed with how awesome Jacob did on this hike.  He hiked all the way to the falls (2.5 miles) with basically no complaining! The falls were pretty but crowded.  Micah, Jacob, Hailey and I got in the water to do a little swimming and the water was SO cold. My Dad said he wanted to get in but didn't want his shorts to be wet since they were cotton and wouldn't dry fast...if only he had known....  About 5 minutes into our hike back it started to POUR down rain.  Not a little drizzle, POUR, and it didn't stop the entire way back.  Since I was already wet from swimming I didn't even bother with rain gear.  Memories!

Tuesday we had a relaxed morning cooking breakfast in the cabin and taking our time getting ready.  Then we headed to Trish's mountain grill for lunch and on to our "White water" floating.  I knew this wasn't going to be an exciting "white water" trip since they allowed 3 year olds but it really was more like a float trip.  Ohh well, we still had fun enjoying the river and the beautiful views.

Wednesday we went to Dollywood.  Honestly, I always expected this to be mostly a day for Jacob. I knew he would LOVE Dollywood.  The kid loves rollercoasters and going fast. Overall, our thoughts on Dollywood was kinda eh.  But the memories with Jacob are excellent. Sadly, he was 1" short for all the rides and Hailey was about 1/2" short to ride what Jacob could ride. The best memory ever is when Micah decided to record Jacob on his favorite roller coaster. When Jacob realizes Micah has his phone out he says "oh no! they said no phones!" 😂 Our little rule follower.

Thursday we drove to Clingman's Dome.  Our first stop was at the Tennessee/North Carolina state line.

I knew it was closed for renovations but based on the website I believed we would still be able to go up to the viewing area of the Dome....WRONG.  Luckily, 2/3 of the way up the hike another Mom informed us that we were already at the best view point and that if we kept going up we wouldn't see anything so Nana, Jacob and I stopped. It was never open while we were there.  BUT we did have excellent weather for viewing the day we went and were still able to get some good pictures.

 After our stop at Clingman's Dome, we drove back towards Gatlinburg but stopped to do the Alum Cave Trail hike.  We didn't make it to Mt. LeConte but we still had a fun, beautiful hike.

At this point in the hike, we decided it was a great turn around point and call it the end.  However, Micah felt like he still had some hike left in him so he continued on while we hiked back. He was able to get some beautiful pics.

While Micah was doing that, we hiked back to the parking area and then let the kids play in the creek.  This may have been the most fun they had all week :)  Jacob loved throwing rocks, and challenging himself climbing over water and rocks.  I challenged myself as a mom to let go and let him explore. 

Friday we headed off to drive the Roaring Forks motor trail (are we British?).  Up until this point we still had not seen a single bear.  As we were leaving our cabin, Micah suddenly yelled "bear!".

After getting plenty of pictures, and wondering where Mama bear was, we continued on tour Roaring Forks motor trail.  Note that this in on a Friday in July.....  The drive itself is beautiful but slow moving.  Once we came to the trial I had planned to hike, we couldn't find a parking spot anywhere.  We all agreed that we like hiking but not with 1000 other people so we decided to just move on. The rest of our day was spend basically killing time.

All of our evenings were spent pretty low key in Gatlinburg.  One night we just decided to order pizza and stay in.  Early on in our trip one evening we decided to play Putt Putt.  We ended up buying an unlimited Putt Putt pass for our trip which meant that we played almost every day.  Jacob still says this is his favorite part of the trip.

Saturday was our last morning in Gatlinburg.  We woke up, packed up, and headed for Atlanta.  On our drive out of the park we came upon a beautiful view point to get a few last stop pictures.

Of course upon entering Atlanta we had to stop at Sweetwater Brewery.

Our evening in Atlanta was spent at the Brave's game.  At one point in my life and for a longer point in Micah's life we were both Brave's fans (I had posters of Chiper Jones and David Justice).  The area around SunTrust stadium is really nice with lots of fun restaurants and bars.  It makes for a really cool experience walking up to the stadium.

 The game was super fun and we all had a great time doing the Tamahawk chop.  They had a kids area that had lots of things your could pay extra to do 🙄 but I decided to spend another $10 bucks to let the kids have fun.  Jacob chose to do the zip line.  It was awesome!

The Braves game was the end to our fun summer vacation. Sunday morning we dropped my parents off at the Atlanta airport and then began our drive home.  We figured out that Auburn Alabama was going to be about the lunch time on our drive so we asked some of our Auburn friends about where to eat and it did not disappoint.  We also drove around the campus and took a couple pictures.

We had a great summer vacation and I honestly enjoyed the Smoky Mountains more than I even expected!