gatlinburg

Last weekend we went to Gatlinburg to meet up with Trent and Frank, two of our high school buddies. Allow me to make an observation: Mapquest is the devil. I literally thought we were going to die on that dark, rainy, foggy (no really, ALL of those things) road before we got there. I was actually praying, "God please don't let a deer jump out. Please don't let us hydroplane." (Confidence is something hard to come by when you keep seeing signs that say, "Curvy road next 11 miles," "Elk crossing," or "Watch for falling rock.") It was THE scariest drive I've ever endured... and that's saying a lot people - I've been in many a scary ride situation with my dad and his fast cars. This was not Matt's fault though. Mapquest - you know, the devil - literally took us on the darkest, curviest roads known to man. There were thick patches of fog, slick rainy spots, and 90 degree turns. It was terrible. I really wanted to kiss the ground when we finally got there, but being over 5 months pregnant made that a little difficult.

When we finally got to our cabin, Trent made a fire (God bless him), and we got to relax for a while before going to bed. Trent mentioned something about hiking the next day - HAH! Matt said, "Patrice can't even go up a set of stairs." That's not exactly true - I can go up them... I just can't breathe at the top. So anyway, the next day we opted for a drive-thru scenic tour of Cade's Cove and found a creek right off the road - no hiking involved. Cade's Cove was an 11 mile loop by car or bike (which do you think we chose???), but we only went a few miles because it was getting late and we were hungry.

We ate at an awesome steakhouse Saturday night and saw Jeff Francoeur (see earlier post) before heading back to the cabin for another fire and more relaxing. On Sunday we went to the outlets just north of Gatlinburg before heading on our way. We took a different way home (all I-40), but weren't too fond of it either, as it took us at least 5 hours to get home. What can I say? We're hard to please. All in all it was a very fun trip, and it was great to see the boys and Katie (Trent's sister - Woohoo! Another girl!) again.

Here are some pics.

The view from the back deck of our cabin

Downtown Gatlinburg

Frank eating some cabbage...

Frank regretting having eaten the cabbage...

The creek we didn't hike to (to which we didn't hike???)

Cade's Cove