5 years ago
Thursday, June 28, 2007
On Thursday, we decided to go our separate ways to do some of the things that were still on individual lists of things to do. Jessica, Ella and I headed toward the outlet malls and Jennifer's family drove into the mountains to look for waterfalls, and to the Ober Gatlinburg tram to ride up the side of the mountain. We met at the Apple Barn sometime after noon for fried pies and ice cream.
We hit the scrapbook store and clearance center in Governor's Crossing. For anyone who's interested in scrapbooking, no matter the skill level, you can find just about anything you need in one of the two stores. Old Navy and Dress Barn rounded out our spending spree, giving us a chance to expand our wardrobes for next year. The whole time we were at Five Oaks, it looked like a storm was brewing. Some of the ladies at Dress Barn were talking about hail being mixed in with the storm - wherever it was. But the threat of whatever it was wasn't going to keep us from shopping!
Apple Barn fried pies are always a great treat - complete with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream - for just $2.99. By the time we finished the pies, the wind had started picking up and the dark clouds were rolling in. All signs pointed to another monsoon, just like every other day. We ran to the cars and headed back to the cabin. Nothing. Finally - a day without rain!
I surpassed the 1000-picture mark! By the end of the night, I was up to 1006 total for the week.
Ella in front of the Apple Barn . . .
. . . and on the deck back at the cabin. We maintain strict criteria for choosing a place to eat on vacation. First, it can't be somewhere we can eat at home - which narrows our list of available restaurants by half. Second, we have a list of "must eats" that we have to get in at some point. Of course third is our list of places to avoid, which currently only contains one restaurant solely because of the price. On Wednesday, we decided to try out a new place for lunch - Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. But first . . . breakfast and the aquarium.
Breakfast was at one of the two Shoney's restaurants in Pigeon Forge. The Shoney's breakfast buffet is a memorable experience from all our childhoods that hasn't been possible in a while since all the restaurants around our area closed down. We enjoyed the breakfast, and I especially liked the strawberries! By the time we finished, they were clearing out the breakfast items to switch over to the lunch buffet.
Carter's had a nice sale, including a $4.99 and under warehouse sale upstairs. Ella bought enough clothes to last through next Summer, at an average of just over $4.00 per piece - a steal for baby clothes!
If you've been to Gatlinburg in the past decade, you know that Ripley's is buying out the whole town, building their museums and attractions, and all but changing the name to Ripleyburg. Or maybe it will be Ripley's Gatlinburg in keeping with the naming tradition of the rest of their empire. The largest Ripley's attraction is the Aquarium of the Smokies - a large, blue building in the center of town where two other streets intersect with Parkway. It's impossible to miss and, as I finally realized this year, just as impossible to avoid. At $19.99 per adult ticket, I had tried to avoid going because I thought it would be a waste of money that could be spent on EATING shrimp, lobster and crab . . . not WATCHING them!
The aquarium was surprisingly more enjoyable than I expected. While some of the smaller exhibits weren't that great, there was a fish that you couldn't see because its camouflaged color made it blend in with the sand, the orange jellies with the blue background were awesome, and there was one kind of dragon fish that looked like a floating bush - it had green things that looked just like leaves! The best part of the aquarium experience was the long conveyor belt that wound its way under a large pool of all sorts of fishes and lots of sharks!
After the aquarium, we were hungry for . . . seafood, of course! So we headed up the street to Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. A few weeks ago, I did some research about the area to see what had changed since we were here last year, and I found out that this new restaurant would be opening June 16. I had suggested that we try it out, and it passed our criteria, so we did.
From the time we walked through the door, we could tell that the service at Bubba Gump didn't even compare with what had happened a few days earlier across the street at Lineberger's. All the servers and wait staff work together to make sure customers' needs are met. In the middle of the table, they have license plates that say "Run Forrest Run" and "Stop Forrest Stop." If you have everything you need and you're enjoying your meal, you leave the blue "RUN" sign up. Any time you need something, you flip the plate over the show the "STOP" sign, and someone comes to your table - in our experience, within fifteen to thirty seconds - to see what you need. We used the sign for Jessica's meal, which was delayed in the kitchen a few minutes, and to order dessert. Each time, someone other than our particular server came over (she was busy with other customers) and they were more than happy to check on the food and place our dessert order. We were very impressed with the way everyone pulled together to get the job done, and with the attitudes they had about it.
The food at Bubba Gump wasn't quite as good as Lineberger's, but it was still great. I ordered Shrimper's Heaven - a collection of four different types of shrimp that I can't find on their website menu . . . oh well. Three of the varieties are fried and the other is chilled peel-and-eat. It was a lot of shrimp, and definitely worth the $16.00. Dessert, appetizers, our two meals and a meal for Ella was all the same price as our two meals at Lineberger's. The chocolate cookie sundae was awesome!
We finished our second day's stay in Gatlinburg by shopping in the stores we missed on the first visit. Wednesday's rain came as we were finishing our lunch, then slacked off but continued through most of our shopping. So far, it's rained every day . . . imagine that!
We headed back to the cabin to relax in the hot tub and get to bed.
Breakfast was at one of the two Shoney's restaurants in Pigeon Forge. The Shoney's breakfast buffet is a memorable experience from all our childhoods that hasn't been possible in a while since all the restaurants around our area closed down. We enjoyed the breakfast, and I especially liked the strawberries! By the time we finished, they were clearing out the breakfast items to switch over to the lunch buffet.
Carter's had a nice sale, including a $4.99 and under warehouse sale upstairs. Ella bought enough clothes to last through next Summer, at an average of just over $4.00 per piece - a steal for baby clothes!
If you've been to Gatlinburg in the past decade, you know that Ripley's is buying out the whole town, building their museums and attractions, and all but changing the name to Ripleyburg. Or maybe it will be Ripley's Gatlinburg in keeping with the naming tradition of the rest of their empire. The largest Ripley's attraction is the Aquarium of the Smokies - a large, blue building in the center of town where two other streets intersect with Parkway. It's impossible to miss and, as I finally realized this year, just as impossible to avoid. At $19.99 per adult ticket, I had tried to avoid going because I thought it would be a waste of money that could be spent on EATING shrimp, lobster and crab . . . not WATCHING them!
The aquarium was surprisingly more enjoyable than I expected. While some of the smaller exhibits weren't that great, there was a fish that you couldn't see because its camouflaged color made it blend in with the sand, the orange jellies with the blue background were awesome, and there was one kind of dragon fish that looked like a floating bush - it had green things that looked just like leaves! The best part of the aquarium experience was the long conveyor belt that wound its way under a large pool of all sorts of fishes and lots of sharks!
After the aquarium, we were hungry for . . . seafood, of course! So we headed up the street to Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. A few weeks ago, I did some research about the area to see what had changed since we were here last year, and I found out that this new restaurant would be opening June 16. I had suggested that we try it out, and it passed our criteria, so we did.
From the time we walked through the door, we could tell that the service at Bubba Gump didn't even compare with what had happened a few days earlier across the street at Lineberger's. All the servers and wait staff work together to make sure customers' needs are met. In the middle of the table, they have license plates that say "Run Forrest Run" and "Stop Forrest Stop." If you have everything you need and you're enjoying your meal, you leave the blue "RUN" sign up. Any time you need something, you flip the plate over the show the "STOP" sign, and someone comes to your table - in our experience, within fifteen to thirty seconds - to see what you need. We used the sign for Jessica's meal, which was delayed in the kitchen a few minutes, and to order dessert. Each time, someone other than our particular server came over (she was busy with other customers) and they were more than happy to check on the food and place our dessert order. We were very impressed with the way everyone pulled together to get the job done, and with the attitudes they had about it.
The food at Bubba Gump wasn't quite as good as Lineberger's, but it was still great. I ordered Shrimper's Heaven - a collection of four different types of shrimp that I can't find on their website menu . . . oh well. Three of the varieties are fried and the other is chilled peel-and-eat. It was a lot of shrimp, and definitely worth the $16.00. Dessert, appetizers, our two meals and a meal for Ella was all the same price as our two meals at Lineberger's. The chocolate cookie sundae was awesome!
We finished our second day's stay in Gatlinburg by shopping in the stores we missed on the first visit. Wednesday's rain came as we were finishing our lunch, then slacked off but continued through most of our shopping. So far, it's rained every day . . . imagine that!
We headed back to the cabin to relax in the hot tub and get to bed.
This fish looks like an American flag!
Fishes . . . duh.
A shark swimming just above our heads!
Ella with Mommy
I held a horseshoe crab!
The fish that looked like a bush
Bubba Gump
The last baby standing (the one on the right!)
The morning started with hot Krispy Kremes . . . which is always a good way to start, end, or get through any day. After showers, we packed a picnic lunch and headed out toward Cades Cove, an abandoned settlement in a flat area surrounded by mountains.
There are many coves in the Smokies, and they were often chosen by settlers as locations for communities. They provided fields for farming, trees for logging, and streams for milling. At its peak, this particular cove had over 100 families. It was used in the 90's as the setting for the "Christy" TV series based on the novel by Catherine Marshall about her mother's experiences as a teacher in a setting similar to the Cades Cove area.
The winding road to the cove took us over 20 miles from Gatlinburg, so by the time we got there, we were ready to eat. We pulled in to the picnic area and unloaded the ice chest and Wal-Mart bags. Sandwiches and chips were made, and we had just started enjoying the meal when, suddenly, we heard a rustling noise in the trees, growing increasingly loud by the second. We all looked at each other and asked, "is that rain?" I grabbed my camera from the table and stood up, then felt the first drop of rain as I lifted my leg over the table's bench. By the time I made it to the van, the rain was pouring.
By the time we had everything packed away and were all sitting in the van, the rain started to lighten. It moved out more slowly than it moved in, but the rain didn't last over thirty minutes. We finished the picnic in the van and pulled out to start driving the 11-mile loop around the cove.
We've always heard that you can see bears in the cove, but when we were here on our honeymoon, we only saw deer. A few miles into our trip this time, we had seen a few deer and several turkeys, but we were thinking we still weren't going to see a bear. Jessica has been looking forward to seeing a bear since we started planning our vacation, so she was very disappointed.
A little over half-way around the loop, we stopped at the visitor center and farm area. I like this area best because there is a lot to see in one stop, rather than one or two buildings, which is a lot more convenient with three kids and a stroller. When we were in the visitor center, I overheard one of the park employees telling a visitor about a "bear jam," a traffic backup created by the spotting of a bear. He said that if the gentleman had to sit in traffic for a while, that would probably be why.
When we left the center to head down the path exploring the rest of the buildings, I told everyone in our group about the bear. I didn't really think it would be there longer than a few minutes, and I thought that even if we left then, we'd miss it. So I suggested we keep looking around, and if it was still there, we'd see it on our way out. About a half-hour later, we loaded up the van and headed back for the loop. Probably a mile up the road, we saw a long line of traffic barely creeping along. We knew exactly what we were about to see . . . a BEAR!!!
We could finally see the end of the line, and there was a park ranger standing beside the road telling everyone to roll up their windows and not stop. So we did just that . . . closed the van doors, rolled up the windows, and drove by the bear. I steered with my left hand, resting my camera on my arm and snapping pictures with my right hand.
We took a new way home - leaving the beaten path for a less-traveled route. There were originally three roads entering the cove. One of these roads is number 8 on the auto tour - a seven-mile gravel road that heads out toward Townsend, winding up and through the mountains, taking travelers to another cove on the other side. It provides a great look at Cades Cove from high above, and it lets travelers slow down to ponder what it would have been like for the settlers to build and travel the same roads - in much worse condition.
Here are some pictures from the day.
Ella sitting on a split-rail fence
Jessica, Ella & me with the cove and mountains in the background
Ella with the mountains
The bear!
A look at the cove from high aboveTuesday, June 26, 2007
Monday was a slow day - probably the slowest day of our whole vacation. We didn't leave the cabin until 5:00 in the evening. Most of the day was spent napping, hot tubbing, cleaning, and just relaxing around the cabin.
Dinner at Lineberger's was great . . . can't say the same for the service or speed. A Chinese family came in after we had ordered and sat at the table next to ours. They ended up getting our appetizer, they had their food before we finally got our mushrooms, and they had finished their meals and left (and their table had been cleaned off) before we got ours. It took about an hour and a half from the time we walked in until we had our food. We were going to complain, but the food was so good it caused us to not say anything.
After dinner, we did some street shopping in Gatlinburg. The shops sit right on the edge of the Parkway (with a sidewalk, of course) and they sell anything from ice cream to pot pipes . . . guns and knives to purses and t-shirts. And then there are the candy stores!!! The sidewalks are fairly large, compared to those in Fredericktown, but they're kinda small when they're filled with hundreds of people and tons of strollers. It sure doesn't leave much room for a double stroller.
We've lost track of how many times people have come up to us and asked if Ella and Amelia are twins. At Applewood the other day, the hostess asked if they're twins and James said no. She said, "yeah, she's bigger," and pointed to Ella (who's three months younger.) Last night, a man pointed at them and said, "she laughed," meaning Ella, "but he didn't like it," meaning Amelia. Hmm . . . .
We shopped until around 10:30, then headed back to the cabin. Sometime around midnight, we cut into the watermelon (I was VERY disappointed - it wasn't ripe.) Julianna and I had been looking forward to it since we bought it Saturday night. We ended the night relaxing in the hot tub, then headed for bed.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Sunday was a slow day – a day of rest. I tried sleeping in, but once everyone else was up, I had to get out of bed to see what was up. I couldn’t stay in bed while something was happening out in the rest of the cabin. We took it slow all morning – hot tub, pool, snacks, and TV. Sometime around 1:00 or 1:30, everyone was finally dressed and ready to go out into the world.
Lunch at Applewood Farmhouse Restaurant was awesome as usual. Their smoked pork loin with apple relish is awesome – and you get a ton of extras to go with your meal . . . apple julep, apple fritters, vegetable soup, salad, rolls, and dessert.
After lunch, we took one of the shorter scenic drives in the area – the Roaring Forks Auto Tour. It’s a winding one-way road up one side of a mountain and back down the other, exploring the area that was once home to some of the area’s earliest settlers. The folks had to abandon their farms and ways of life when the government took their land to create the national park. Some of the buildings we saw were original to their locations, while others had been moved from other neighboring farms and areas. One house we saw had been painted white with blue and yellow trim – the “only three colors Sears and Roebuck sold.” We stopped once along the auto tour to look at some of the buildings and wade in the stream. We also took some time for pictures. So far, I’ve taken 331 pictures since Thursday.
This is the third summer we’ve been here, and it seems like rain is both guaranteed and unpredictable. No sign of rain one minute, and a monsoon the next. That was the case yesterday. On the way back from Gatlinburg, it started raining – a lot. It poured practically the whole way back to the cabin, then let up just long enough for us to unload and get settled in for the evening; then it opened up and poured again – both vertically and horizontally. Sure, a charcoal grill probably works better when you’re not in the middle of a mountainside hurricane . . . but the experience was definitely a unique one!
Ella at Applewood 
Old-fashioned ice cream maker
Welcome to the Apple Barn!
Ella at one of the buildings on the auto tour
Ella next to the split-rail fence
Us in the streamSunday, June 24, 2007
Just an hour behind schedule, we left Nashville around 11:00 on Saturday. I was definitely pleased that we were ONLY an hour behind. Somewhere between Crab Orchard and Knoxville, we hit the hardest rain I've ever driven through. Between the sheets of torrential rain, the hail, and the fog, it was all but impossible to see the cars ahead. Hundreds of cars were pulled over on a few-mile stretch of the interstate; we decided to creep along and not take the chance of being stuck on the shoulder for an hour or so.
Around 5:00, we made it to the office to check in to the cabin. We found the cabin and unloaded all our stuff, then went to the Mandarin House Chinese buffet (over 160 items). It was the first time I'd ever eaten potato salad at a Chinese restaurant! Then we went to Wal-Mart to buy our groceries for the week and headed back to the cabin to relax in the hot tub and finally crawl into bed as the calendar changed to day four.
View from the deck door
The kitchen
Wrap-around porch with swings, chairs & hot tub
Saturday, June 23, 2007
On Thursday, we loaded up the van a day early and headed out for a three-day trip to Gatlinburg. Ok, I know it only takes about eight hours, but we decided to take it slow on the way down. On Thursday, we went to Jessica's grandparents' house in Broseley (about half an hour east of Poplar Bluff.) We were greeted by a lunch of barbeque chicken, twice-baked potatoes, fresh tomatoes, macaroni & cheese, and salad. Wow - I can get used to a lunch like that! For dinner, we went to a Chinese buffet in Poplar Bluff.
Friday morning, we packed up and headed to Nashville. Jessica's uncle lives in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee - a suburb of Nashville. They have two twin two-year-old girls. We met Jessica's sister there. She has a three-year-old girl and a one-year-old girl. And we have a nine-month-old girl. Anyone keeping up with the math here? FIVE girls under four!!!
Friday night, we took all the girls to the Rainforest Cafe at Opry Mills Mall. Sure, we used half our eating-out budget for one meal, but it was definitely worth it for the experience. We drove out to Phil & Beverly's new house and took the tour - the walls are up and the roof is on. On the way back, we stopped by Dairy Queen. Wow - a large Blizzard is about the size of an extra-small concrete at Dairy Bar. It definitely made us appreciate what we've got!!!
It's 9:09 on Saturday morning and we're getting ready for breakfast. We're hoping to leave Nashville around 10:00 so we can make it to the cabin between 4 and 5. We'll see how it works out - we haven't seen Jennifer all morning . . . it may be a while before she surfaces from the basement. Here are some pictures . . . .
Ella with Granny & Pa's dog, Suzie
Ella in the kitchen floor
Granny reading Ella her bedtime story, Noah and the Ark
Us at the Rainforest Cafe
The Five Girls
Thursday, June 07, 2007
. . . really, I am. If you've noticed that I haven't posted in . . . um
. . . two weeks . . . it's because I've been frantically working on my
internship. I have the ISLLC test on Saturday (it's the certification
test for administrators - six hours of writing) and comps on the 19th.
I HAVE to get my internship projects finished before the 15th so Dr.
Bertrand can look at them before my comps. Then I have two summer
classes (Foundations of Administration and Administration of Special Ed)
and I'm FINISHED!!! I can't wait! As you can see, I've been way too
busy to blog, but I hope to have time to catch up soon. I'll definitely
try to share some pictures and thoughts from vacation (June 21 - 30) and
maybe I can share some exciting news from the job hunt??? We'll see!
Still working in that department, too! But for now, it's 12:30 AM . . .
time for bed!!!
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