Ahhhh, Vacation!

Yes, vacation is wonderful. Even more wonderful is vacation without children. I love them a lot, but sometimes it's nice to be alone with Ryan without distractions. Thanks to all who prayed, everything went great! We did have a few little hitches, but nothing that couldn't be overcome. Thursday morning we were late getting to the airport for multiple reasons. Also,we hadn't called to check if the flight time had changed. Bad idea in case you are flying soon. We got to the airport 25 minutes before our flight was supposed to take off. However, the screen said that our flight was to leave in 5 minutes!!! The lady behind the counter said, "It's too late to check a bag." Ryan was quickly thinking of how we could stuff as much stuff as we could into our carry on and leave the rest in our car. Well, as we were standing there waiting to be helped (there were people at the counter in front of us) the lady changed her mind and let us check our bag. We found out why once we boarded the plane. There was "weather" in Chicago, so we were delayed. We sat on the runway for about 45 minutes. I know that other people on the plane may not have felt this way, but thank you God for a delay or we would have had to rearrange our plans. We made our connection and were good to go. Arrival in Tennessee was great and when we got to our cabin we realized that it was just as great as we were hoping. The view of the mountains was breath taking and the hot tub on the deck was great! The cabin was huge, but was a great price even compared to smaller cabins, so we just enjoyed all the space.

This is the living room/kitchen

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The wonderful hot tub with an amazing mountain view

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The front of our cabin and our rental car (which was great for the mountain roads)

Our wonderful view

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I thought this barn was so picturesque. It was on the same road as our cabin.

I hate to admit it, but I have stereotypes of Tennessee and the people who live there. However, some of them were confirmed as you can see in this picture. We could have taken multiple pictures to prove this point.

Friday and Saturday we spent the day in the Great Smokey Mountain National Park. It is huge, so we didn't even come close to seeing it all. The views were gorgeous and we got to see wildlife. My favorite were the bear. You'll see my best picture, an up-close shot of a bear. I got out of the vehicle to take the picture. Ryan was very surprised that I was so brave, but what can I say, I wanted to show the kids and couldn't believe that we were so close.

A view from our drive to the park.

In the park there were many houses that were there before the park opened. It didn't open until 1935. It's crazy to think about people living in these houses not that long ago. This house belonged to a family with 9 kids! Thank God for modern amenities!

I mean can you imagine living here?

Another house in the park

My prize bear picture. It was just across the road from us!

Another house in the park.

This mill is still in use, just for visitors to the park, but it was cool to see.

I think this is a chicken coop.

We also went to Tuckaleechee Caverns. They were huge. It was cool to hear how in the 1930's two six year old boys found the caverns and then in 1950's they opened them up to the public. The pictures don't do the cavern justice.

The roads in and around the park were so curvy. If you could go 45, it felt very fast! I had to take a picture of our GPS so you could see how winding the roads were. This particular road was a short cut. It was only 7 miles, but it took us about 40 minutes. The scenery was beautiful and we didn't have a schedule, so who cares how long it took!

This is a picture of the driveway up to our cabin.

An elk, who knew they lived in Tenneesee?

It was so wonderful to be able to celebrate our 10th anniversary like this. What a great 10 years it has been and I wonder what we'll do to celebrate our 15th?