The first evening we arrived we ate at No Way Jose's. It's right downtown Gatlinburg and within walking distance of our hotel. On day one, we had fun at the aquarium (I caught Pikachu on Pokemon Go!). The boys enjoyed running around looking in the fish tanks. We ate at Zaxby's in the Mountain Mall and saw Santa Claus! He was on vacation, too, but offered to take pictures with the boys. He also left his calling card. That afternoon we drove up to Ober Gatlinburg and did the $0.50 rides and saw the bears. For dinner I made a crockpot vegetable beef soup.
Santa!
Ober Gatlinburg rides.
The second day we drove to Pigeon Forge (quickest time ever with no traffic) and visited the large knife store. We ate lunch at the Applewood Farmhouse and looked around their stores. My cousin Amanda was in town for her honeymoon so we met up, and were introduced to her new husband, Will. Shortly afterwards, we saw the Animal Show at the Comedy Barn. The boys liked it, but it was 2 full hours, which was about an hour longer than their tolerance of sitting still. A lady in the audience offered tickets to a magic show in the area. After holding them down for two hours, we turned her down. That evening we walked around the shops in downtown Gatlinburg, and had dinner at one of the local places.
Alex picked out jelly beans as his treat.
Waiting on the animal show to start.
On day three we went back to Pigeon Forge and shopped around. The Tanger outlets were not crowded at all. For lunch we ate at Paula Deen's new huge restaurant. We got right in and sat down to eat family style. We toured the shops at The Landing and then took the boys on some local rides. They enjoyed the merry go round, train, swings, and ferris wheel. We ate dinner at the condo - garbanzo bean soup in the crock pot!
Our view from the condo
Day four we ventured back to Pigeon Forge and went to the Rainforest Zoo. It was mostly indoors (and smelled strongly of animals when you first walk in). Since it was 95 degrees outside, we were very thankful for an indoor air-conditioned zoo. We saw a lot of monkeys and snakes. We shopped at the VF outlet store and then ate at Chick Fil A for lunch. We mostly shopped around town in Gatlinburg the rest of the day. We ordered Mellow Mushroom pizza for dinner.
The fifth day was our last full day. We stayed in Gatlinburg all day and walked from one end to the other. We toured through an old cemetary that had lots of Ogles and Partons in it. A stray dog came slowly out of the trees toward Vince & Alex and then trotted right past them. It looked just like a large wolf, only Vince said it had a collar. Heebie jeebies! We ate at Dick's Last Resort and all touted hats with insults on them. After shopping around, we got a Ben & Jerry's treat. For dinner, we ate our leftover soups and pizza at the condo.
Finally getting to go swimming!
I was very happy to sleep in my own bed, as opposed to sharing a room with Evan and Alex. They are cute, but getting woken up by Evan at 2:40am one morning as he flopped into my bed after crawling out of the port a crib, and then at 3:45am another morning by Alex because he wanted to know where the aquarium is, can be exhausting. Here's to a successful trip!
