Smoky Mountains - day 3

Monday was a full day for us.  I'll share only part today so you don't have to look at too much in one day.

Just driving through Smoky Mountain National Park is amazing, seeing the mountains out the windows, and usually being able to see a stream flowing next to the road.

We stopped at Newfound Gap which is on the border of North Carolina and Tennessee.

I made Andy and Nikki pose too.

At Newfound Gap, you can also get on the Appalachian Trail.

The spring flowers are so pretty!

We then drove on to Clingman's Dome.  We didn't climb to the top because I probably couldn't, and it would have taken about an hour, but even the views from the parking lot were incredible!

As we continued our drive, we stopped at this picturesque bridge.  That's Bob and Andy on it.

As I told you, there is almost always a stream running along the road as you drive and it's such a beautiful sight!

Andy then took us to Cherokee, which is an Indian Reservation in North Carolina.  They have a Bamboo Forest he wanted to show us.
Here we all are in the middle of it.

Andy took this cool photo looking up at the tops of the bamboo.  

There is a little river on the edge of the forest and Andy was goofing off and threatening to push Bob in.  We always have fun when he's around!

A wooden sculpture in Cherokee.

We stopped for lunch in Bryson, North Carolina at this small town restaurant that was in a Quonset hut.

Tomorrow I'll share what we did for the rest of the day.

Smoky Mountains, day 2

Our Sunday was a quieter day.  We had a peaceful morning and were able to watch the live stream of our church from the cabin.
That afternoon we went to the Foothills parkway and drove it for awhile.  I never tire of the beauty of the Smoky Mountains!

Can you see the little bee on the clover?

We stopped in Pigeon Forge and had supper at the Paula Dean restaurant.  It was delicious!

We saw these beautiful barns on the way back to the cabin.  I am always drawn to barns and there are so many great barns here, but a lot of them are in areas where you can't get a picture of them.

As we saw all this beauty, from the tiny flowers to the huge mountains, I had this phrase from the old hymn 'How Great Thou Art' go through my head.

"When through the woods, and forest glades I wander,
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees. 
When I look down, from lofty mountain grandeur
And see the brook, and feel the gentle breeze.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art."

Smoky Mountain get-away

 We're back from our short vacation, so prepare yourselves for lots of pictures as I share what we did!
Our son and DIL live in KY, so we decided to take a short vacation to the Smoky Mountains and spend some time with them there.

It takes about 10 hours to drive from our home to the cabin we had rented near Pigeon Forge.  We decided to leave on Thursday and drive part way so it wouldn't be such a long day. That day went fine. Friday was not so fun though.  We ran into lots of construction, very busy roads and then torrential downpours while driving through the mountains.  As we got close to the cabin it stopped raining.

Here you can see the clouds hanging over the mountains.  This is the valley right before we drove up to our cabin.

It was quite a drive to the cabin, steep hills and switchback turns which were pretty scary.  Then we got to our driveway and wondered if we could go up it - it was so steep along with a turn back.  After we'd been there, we found out if we went a ways down the road, we could turn around and then enter a little straighter which made it easier.

Here's a picture of the driveway from the house.  You can see how steep it was and what a turn it was as we were coming from the right.

Once we got there, the cabin was beautiful!

This is the view we had from the deck.

The rain drops were still hanging on the leaves.

This was the living area, the dining area is to the right, and the kitchen was there too.  It was a very nice place to stay in.
Andy and Nikki arrived about an hour after we got there, and we settled in for the evening.

On Saturday morning, Andy and Nikki went for a little hike, and Bob and I took a little drive.  We loved seeing the beautiful scenery!

Along with the beautiful spots are the tourist spots!

This little stream ran near our cabin.  It was such a pretty spot.  I was down near the rocks taking pictures and there was a little bat sleeping that I took a picture of.  I was so upset later, when I tried to upload the picture and found I had a bad SD card and all the pics I took were gone, including the ones of the bat.

That afternoon, Andy and Nikki to us to Skyland Ranch to check it out and then to go to a dinner show there.

I'm not a fan of heights, so wasn't thrilled with this part.  We had to take the sky tram to get up to the ranch.  Nikki and I were in one tram, that's Bob and Andy in the tram ahead of us.  I was glad to get back on solid ground!

Bob and I at the ranch.  Excuse my squint - the sun was so bright!

There were lots of animals to see, including some cute highland cows.

Bob and Nikki posing for us.

After this we went to our dinner show called the Chuck Wagon Express where we had a really good BBQ dinner.

The show had music, whip cracking, rope tricks and lots of humor.  Andy even got called up to help in an Old McDonald Skit.

We ended the day with this gorgeous sunset over the mountains.