Gatlinburg

While on vacation, we spent most of our days in the towns of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. These two towns lie outside of the Smoky Mountain National Park, and they are major tourist destinations. Our country may be in a recession, but you would never know it if you judged the economy by how many people were in these two towns last week. While I personally prefer towns that are less "touristy"and more quaint, for a trip with kids these towns offered plenty to do. There were tons of activities- putt putt, laser tag, go-kart tracks, fun houses, wax museums, Ripley's attractions, etc... Our plan was to visit each town, walk around, and basically just do whatever we felt like doing.

The first town on our list was Gatlinburg, and we spent the second day of our vacation exploring this town. In Gatlinburg all of the attractions are really close together, so you park your car in a pay parking lot and walk to everything. One of the first things that we spotted while walking down the sidewalk was a putt putt course. Brian wanted to do this, so we did. The kids had never played putt putt before, and it was a lot of fun for them. Olivia really liked it- so much so that we ended up playing another round on our last night of vacation. Unlike her brother, Olivia really tried to hit the ball using the club, and she did pretty well. Owen was not so patient, and he usually ended up kicking the ball or picking it up with his hand and placing it in the hole.

After our putt putt game, we grabbed a bite to eat at a bar-b-que place and then headed to Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies. Viewing marine life is always a hit with our kids, and this was no exception. The kids spent a lot of time looking at the fish. The sharks and sea turtles were some of their favorites. As far as my review of the aquarium goes, I thought that it was just okay- not bad, but it can't touch the aquariums in Atlanta or Chattanooga. I will say that I was impressed by the super-long glass tunnel that you could walk through to view the fish. I've seen tunnels in aquariums before, but none that were as long as this one. After spending an hour or two in the aquarium, the kids were really tired, so we headed back to our cabin for a much-needed nap.

We returned to Gatlinburg after napping to visit the Ober Gatlinburg Ski Resort and Amusement Park. Of course no skiiing was going on, but there were plenty of other things to do. To get to Ober Gatlinburg, we had to take a tram. The kids loved this. They were tall enough to see out of the window of the tram- so they just stood there and stared during the entire ride up. Once we got to the Ober Gatlinburg resort area, we decided to do the alpine slide- which was kind of like a sled on wheels that went downhill on a track. To get to the top of the slide, we had to take a chair lift. I was nervous about having the kids on a chair lift (that's why I made Brian ride with Owen- he squirms more). Once we got to the top, we got on our sled thing and got ready to go. There were two tracks, so Owen rode with Brian on one track while Olivia rode with me on the other. Even though we all started at the same time, Brian and Owen finished nearly a whole minute before Olivia and I did. The alpine slide was really fun and if we had had more time, we would have done it a second time. It was getting late, though, so we headed back to the cabin. This ended day two. At the bottom of the post I have put a video of Olivia's "victory dance". She did this dance after doing really well on a hole in putt putt. All I can say is that she gets her moves from her mama :)