The Smokey Mountains
This Memorial Day weekend was DEFINITELY not wasted on bumming around, not doing anything. On Friday night, I took a few of my friends home to see my beloved Victorian home before it sells to the next Versaillians, excited to have a house on the parade route. Dad lives in the house by himself now and wants to sell it because it probably cost too much money to heat in the winter. My friends and I ate at Sideliners. Why is it that I have not appreciated the value of Sideliners food at ridiculously low prices until I brought people from Cincinnati to eat there? It's awesome. I got everything at home done that I wanted to in less that 24 hours. I got my final dress fitting for Mark's wedding (which is in less than a month). I delivered Grandma a much belated mother's day card. I finally got to take pictures of every angle of that house so that I can make an album out of it (not a facebook album).
THEN on Sat. when we got back, Mike's roomates asked me if I wanted to come camping in The Smokey Mountains with them. I said sure. It was amazing! We had no tent, I couldn't even find socks to bring, and we bought Gatorade, pop tarts, hot dog buns, marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate to survive on. I had no idea that we were plannin on hiking but we definitely hiked about 5 miles up the mountain and then back down. The plan was to camp at the top but the no tent thing was serving as a problem so we came back down. Those boys were really trucking it. I hiked by myself for about an hour or less because I fell behind. I eventually caught up to them because they took a long break to eat. When I caught up to them, they informed me that they had decided to just get a hotel room in Pigeon Forge for the night. It was a good idea, but man, 4 ketchup sized packets of shampoo for 7 people...we were really roughing it. Not to mention the hotel didn't even have an ironing board! Come to think of it, I don't know how we made it out of there alive.
Also our hotel was right across from the Dixie Stampede. I was stoked about that. Unfortunately we were trying to spend the least amount of money possible.
The 2nd day, we hiked a mile to this really awesome waterfall where we proceeded to climb around on all the places in which nobody else was climbing. There was a lot of slipping and falling into the creek. It was fun. I embarrassed myself by screaming like a girl when I started sliding down the waterfall. We hiked another half mile pretty much straight up and had our lunch...if you can call it that.
On the way home we drove 6 miles out of the way to find a run-down local restaurant in Kentucky for food. The place we found reminded me of a marina like place at Lake St. Mary's. It was called Water Front and there was kind of a view of the river from the back of the restaurant.
It was a really awesome trip but I'm pretty sure I won't be able to fully move without hurting for a week, at least. I'm so glad the guys considered me "one of them" enough to come on this trip.
THEN on Sat. when we got back, Mike's roomates asked me if I wanted to come camping in The Smokey Mountains with them. I said sure. It was amazing! We had no tent, I couldn't even find socks to bring, and we bought Gatorade, pop tarts, hot dog buns, marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate to survive on. I had no idea that we were plannin on hiking but we definitely hiked about 5 miles up the mountain and then back down. The plan was to camp at the top but the no tent thing was serving as a problem so we came back down. Those boys were really trucking it. I hiked by myself for about an hour or less because I fell behind. I eventually caught up to them because they took a long break to eat. When I caught up to them, they informed me that they had decided to just get a hotel room in Pigeon Forge for the night. It was a good idea, but man, 4 ketchup sized packets of shampoo for 7 people...we were really roughing it. Not to mention the hotel didn't even have an ironing board! Come to think of it, I don't know how we made it out of there alive.
Also our hotel was right across from the Dixie Stampede. I was stoked about that. Unfortunately we were trying to spend the least amount of money possible.
The 2nd day, we hiked a mile to this really awesome waterfall where we proceeded to climb around on all the places in which nobody else was climbing. There was a lot of slipping and falling into the creek. It was fun. I embarrassed myself by screaming like a girl when I started sliding down the waterfall. We hiked another half mile pretty much straight up and had our lunch...if you can call it that.
On the way home we drove 6 miles out of the way to find a run-down local restaurant in Kentucky for food. The place we found reminded me of a marina like place at Lake St. Mary's. It was called Water Front and there was kind of a view of the river from the back of the restaurant.
It was a really awesome trip but I'm pretty sure I won't be able to fully move without hurting for a week, at least. I'm so glad the guys considered me "one of them" enough to come on this trip.