Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge Smoky Mountain Trip

Get ready for the post of all posts.  It's kinda large. I won't be offended if you don't want to read it all, but I do this for journaling reasons as well!

This past weekend was the first of our 4 trips planned for this summer.  We are DRIVING to Maine for our next trip in July and this was a test-run to see how Sienna fares in the car for a long time. The verdict: We're screwed. She did NOT do well in the car on the way there (it was a 4 hour drive) and we had to stop at least 3-4 times near the end just to make her stop screaming. We were shoving food, milk, toys, money and everything else we could think of at her, and she wouldn't have any of it.  She would stop crying for a few seconds while we all sang like ruddy fools "the wheels on the bus" song about 50 times, because she was amused at our made-up verses. I mean, after the wheels, and the wipers, and the driver, and the doors, and the people, and the babies, and the mommies on the bus, what else is there?  Well we came up with quite the freak show on our bus ride, let me tell you. There were vampires (they went Hcccch (like a gravelly hiss, there is no right way to spell the vampire sound), and hobos (they went "spare change lady"), and the monsters (they went "blghaskbnlblhga"), and donkeys (they went, well, you know), and Orcs (they went "Man-Flesh!") and Elves (they went "Negadegathire"), and other various animals aboard our bus. We should sell our version to some record company.

But I digress. The point of that paragraph was to say that the drive to Tennessee was less than easy. We reserved a hotel in Pigeon Forge, just 10 min north of Gatlinburg, and the Smoky Mountain National Park. Getting everyone to sleep in the same room (a three year old who is apparently never tired, and a baby who is in an unfamiliar place in an unfamiliar bed) was next to impossible! I think the girls were finally both asleep by about 11pm the first night.  The next 2 nights did get better though.

So we spent 3 days having lots of fun! Sophie spent a lot of time in the indoor pool.  She loves the water! But hates to get it in her eyes/face. Hmmm. That's could be a potential problem when it comes to learning to swim.



We went to a Rainforest Zoo Adventure where Sophie fed some goats, the most common and popular Rainforest animal, you know. JK, they had a petting zoo section of non-rainforest animals, it seems.

 
We also went to a place called Wonderworks, which is like an indoor amusement park "for the mind," as per their slogan. It had some cool things to do, a lot which we couldn't do with small children (the ropes course, the ride that swings you upside down, you know, that stuff) but there was also a lot of cool stuff for the kids. Like bubbles. And earthquake simulators, and the bed of nails, and the giant piano, and the wall of pins (not sharp) where you make body shapes. It was a lot of fun!  And the building is upside-down. That ol' chestnut.

 

One thing about me, Sarah, that you may or may not know, is that I love caves. I got to see plenty of caves in Utah and did some spelunking during a research project I was involved in, where we collected bacteria samples from different cave locations.  We got to squeeze through some tight spaces and go "off the trail" which was awesome. Anyhoo, I felt it was a necessity to see the Forbidden Caverns which was close to where we were staying, so Sophie and I went down into the caverns while Cory and Sienna hung out together and waited for us.  Babies and caves don't mesh, I don't think.

One other thing about me, Sarah, is that I have a strange fascination and at the same time, fear of natural disasters, particularly tidal waves, and a strange fascination and fear of the ocean and it's mysteriousness. So one thing I've always been intrigued by is the disaster of the Titanic sinking.  And so I got to go (by myself) to the Titanic museum.  Which was very expensive and would have been very boring for the girls. But it was fascinating.  Some people love the Civil War, I like the Titanic. The movie was ok too, if they didn't have the love story in it.  The rest was actually quite accurate!



Another thing we did was go to the Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies in Gatlinburg. This was a really great aquarium.  One thing about me, Sarah, (smirk) is that one of the many things I wanted to be growing up, in addition to a doctor, a vet, a scientist (which I did), optometrist, conservation geneticist, etc. etc. was be a marine biologist.  I think it goes along with my fascination of the ocean, the creatures found in it.  Mostly, the fish are kinda boring (except for the one that SPITS water into the air to knock a bug off it's leaf, so it drops into the water so the fish can eat it. Except for that fish), but all the other non-fish creatures are awesome.  I love jellyfish, seahorses, octopuses, sharks... and this aquarium had some cool stuff.  We also saw some real penguins walking out and about in the hallways (with trainers of course).  We always go to an aquarium whenever we go on a trip that has one nearby, and some of the ones on the coast we've been to were pretty crappy.  Like fish tanks in some guy's basement crappy.












Finally, we did make it into the Smoky Mountain National Park for a spell, and went to the Sugarlands Visitor Center and hiked 0.8 miles (round trip) to the Cataracts Waterfall. It was the perfect distance for Sophie, she did great! And Sienna loved being toted around in the backpack.




After a busy weekend we drove home expecting all hell to break loose in the car with Sienna, but she did SO GOOD on the way home, hopefully she's getting used to being in the car.  Because in less than 2 months, we'll be doing it all over again!

It was a great trip! Lots of memories and of course, we took lots of pictures, since our kids won't remember a lick of it.