Gatlinburg Trip

It has been 12 years since Kevin and I took a trip with just the two of us! If you think about it, that means we have NEVER taken a trip alone since before the girls came home! We decided to start our spring break with a trip to Gatlinburg.

On our way there, we drove through Knoxville where we lived the first year we were married. We decided to swing by our old apartments where we paid only $425 a month. I loved that apartment and everything about it. Maybe it is because that was the first place we lived as a married couple but it was a pretty special place for us!

Here is the hill we drove up many times to get to our apartments.

Our apartments were called Crestridge, and they were at the very top of the hill.

Our apartment was the one in the very middle.

We drove past Thompson-Boling Arena and we took a picture of it to show Elia where she will play basketball one day. :O)

Once we got to Pigeon Forge, we found our condo. Kevin's parents let us stay for free in their time share condo for two nights. They were already booked the 3rd night so we made reservations at a different condo for the last night.

Saturday night, after we found our condo, we made a trip to Kroger and got chips, dips, and a Redbox movie, Footloose. We went back to the condo and enjoyed watching the movie in peace.

We slept in Sunday morning and went shopping at the outlet mall. Kevin was a trooper and hung in the entire day without one complaint! I did take this picture of me with a Justin Beiber cut out and emailed it to the girls. They flipped out at first when they thought he was real.

We were craving pancakes Sunday night so we drove around Pigeon Forge looking for a pancake place to eat dinner. There are pancake places on every corner but none that were open for dinner. We found our way to Cracker Barrel where we finally found some pancakes. Then we went back to the condo and played Word Scramble against each other for the rest of the night.

We woke up Monday morning and checked out. Then we drove to Gatlinburg. We started the day at Ober where we took a tram up the mountain. Here we are waiting to board the tram.

Once we got to the top of the mountain, we took the chair lift even further up the mountain. It had to be 30 degrees up there with at least 30 mph winds. It was SOOOO cold!

Here we are going up the ski lift.

This was the view from the very top of the mountain. I did not want to stay up there for long because I couldn't bear the cold.

Here we are going down the ski lift, and a picture of me looking like a goober with my hood on because it was freezing.

Once we got down from the ski lift, we rode halfway back up so we could ride the Alpine Slide back down again. That was a lot of fun!

After our visit to Ober, we ate lunch at the Mellow Mushroom where I enjoyed a vegetarian pizza.

After lunch we went to Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum. Here I am rubbing the Buddha's belly for good luck.

I stood next to the statue of the tallest man ever.

Here is Kevin next to the tallest man.

Here is a picture of me sitting in a really big chair (not sure what the record is here).

Once we finished the museum, we went to the Mirror of Mazes. If you get freaked out in closed in spaces, this was not the place for you.

Here is a picture of Kevin as well as his reflection. It would look like another person down a long hall but it was really just your own reflection. I made sure I held on to Kevin the entire time we were in there. I was not about to get lost!

Then we headed to the Aquarium which I highly recommend to anyone going to Gatlinburg. It was amazing!

Here are some beautiful jellyfish we got to see.

We went through a shark tunnel where shark and fish were swimming over our heads. Pretty amazing!

Here is me being silly in the kid area.

More jellyfish:

Here are the stingrays which Kevin stayed away from. LOL!

And we got to see the penguins.

Once we left the Aqaurium, we headed to our condo to rest up and continue shopping some more. When we got there, we realized the cleaning person had not come from the people who stayed there before us. We called the owner and he told us he had a place at the Christmas Inn. We took our chances and drove to that hotel. Now I love Christmas but not in March! The hotel was covered in Christmas decorations, trees, and music. Santa even comes for a visit with cookies. Anyway, we went to our room to discover it was an obvious downgrade from the condo we were supposed to stay in. Since it was already 5:00 and Kevin was about to fall out from all the Nyquil he took for his cold, we decided to head back a night early. I was so disappointed but at least we saved money since the condo owner was going to charge us the same price for this downgrade! We made a promise to ourselves not to wait another 12 years to do something like this again! It was too much fun being with each other!!!