Vacation Day #1 - Thursday, May 22, 2008

We left home at 4 am so that *hopefully* the children would sleep. HAHA is all I have to say on that front. My dh was driving, I was riding shotgun, Mimi and the 2 boys were on the middle seat, and all 3 girls were in the back - needless to say, we were pretty packed in. The extra boy is another of Mimi's grandchildren, Bailey. Just so you get the total scene here...we have a luggage carrier on top, the back of the Yukon is FULL of food and drinks, the children each have their backpack of stuff (dvd players, ipods, books, drawing stuff, etc) under their seat for easy access - plus each has their own pillow and blanket, I am armed with maps, and Mimi is the child "police" in the backseat - she was the only one who could reach the last row!

So, anyway, we are REALLY Clampettfied at this point, but we are on our way. We were headed on our family vacation that would eventually lead to seven states and a million wonderful memories.

Ok, back to the story, we left at 4 am - having to stop of course for gas, breakfast, and many bathroom breaks. We get to The Lost Sea Adventure in Sweetwater, TN about lunch time (much later than dh would have liked). It was really fun and interesting! We got to take tour of the caves and then ride on a glass bottom boat on the Lost Sea. Here are some pictures:

Then it was off to the cabin in Pigeon Forge, TN. This took a LEEEETLE longer than it should have, because the directions took us up the side of a mountain in the totally WRONG place. We used the address we were given for the cabin to get driving directions through Expedia - but, um...., the address wasn't right...lol :)

That mountain road it took us up had some pretty scary, hair raising twists and turns and NO guard rails (which I found seems to be a prevailing theme in the mountains of TN). Needless to say, we got almost all the way to top before it was obvious we were in the wrong place. We were surrounded by cabins, so we assumed this was the right place...wrong. So, then we had to call the resort and ask again for some specific directions from where we were. Obviously, we did eventually find our cabin - but about 2.5 hours later than we should have!

The cabin was SO nice - as was the entire resort. It was so nice for everyone to have room to spread out, a washer and dryer to do the clothes, a game room, a swimming pool, hot tub, jacuzzi, etc....lol. I wanted to move in and never leave! Here are some pictures of the cabin:

And for the end of day 1, I'll leave you with a picture of what we saw from our "back porch" off the cabin (it was really more like a balcony that hung about 500 feet off the ground on the side of a mountain).

My digital scrapbook of the first day:

Make a Smilebox scrapbook