Gatlinburg ... a Practically Unplanned Adventure! June 27 - July 5, 2009 - Page 17 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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Finally got caught up. The mountains are just beautiful. I think the Cosby trail is my favorite of the ones you've done so far. Glad you had fun bowling and Joshua and Jay enjoyed driving the go carts. You must be busy, but I hope you're back with more soon!
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Mickey's so happy to see me back, he can barely contain himself!
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You guys are the greatest! Do I need to reintroduce myself? Well, starting back to work, even my very little part-time job, I guess just threw me completely off my routine. And I had gotten so lazy over the summer, just doing whatever I wanted to do, whenever I wanted to do it. Anyway, I feel like I'm starting to get caught up a little bit with various things, and yes I do plan to finish this trip report. Now that I've checked back in to see where I left off, I will go work on the next part of it and hope to start posting again soon. It definitely won't be on as regular a basis as what I had been doing, but I'll make it through to the end one of these days. I've got two more trips planned in the next 45 days, so I can't afford to drop the ball completely!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Meggera
What a fun evening in Gatlinburg. I can't get over the 16 oz. burger though. Oh my goodness! You could have split it three ways! Great updates!
Laura, I should have split it 3 ways! Even after just half of it, I was so stuffed! But it was so good ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by MGW
Hope everything is OK, I was waiting for another update. My DS had his first Bear Den meeting on Sunday!
How is he doing in Bears? Getting together my lesson plans for Wolves, I also looked at the requirements for the other levels of Cub Scouts, and I'm excited about getting started in Bears next year. That sounds crazy, since we're just starting Wolves! Have you been keeping up with my blog? That's the only thing I've been keeping current on here, and if it hadn't been for all the work I've put into it previously, I don't know that I would have been able to discipline myself to do that. But this is the only place where I've got all my scout stuff written down at the moment, so I hated to just let it go! Joshua just earned his first bead, and will have his second bead in a few more weeks. We've got our second campout of the year coming up soon, the Polar Bear!
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Scouts is going well so far this year. I went on a bike ride with them a few weeks ago, on a beautiful Autumn Sunday, so that was fun. Unfortunately we can't do most campouts, they are always Saturday night, and DH just can't do that the night before he preaches! Not that he really wants to camp out anyway!
Looking forward to the next TR installment.
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Donning my Wellies to cut Peat in Scotland
Melissa
Thanks all! Now the big question is going to be if I remember how to post pictures! Here we go ...
Day 6 - Thursday, July 2
We woke up, ate breakfast in the room, and prepared our bags and coolers for another outing in the National Park. Today was the day we were going to drive over toward Cherokee to do things. We left the resort around 7:45, and by 8:00 we were making our way into the Park via the main entrance. We planned to drive straight through, stopping here and there for photos, but no trails for right now - we had a lot of driving ahead of us! Our first stop was the Morton Overlook, which is almost to Newfound Gap. It's been so long since I updated that I feel the need to explain once again that Newfound Gap is the high point of the road, and also on the state line of Tennessee and North Carolina. Anyway, we stopped at Morton Overlook because it is one of the better views in the park.
Ignore, if you can, all the graffiti
This is looking West(ish) in the morning, so it's a little dark. But I think the sky is a pretty color.
This is pretty much the same view as the first picture, but I guess I had moved up to the edge of the barricade, because now you can see the road below, right in the center.
A car came along at just the right moment - I had zoomed in on the road below us, where we had come in a few minutes earlier.
Jay stayed in the truck during these quickie stops, and sometimes he took a few shots through my open window while he was otherwise just sitting there.
He thought these three pictures were so cool ...
These next few were taken from the Oconaluftee Valley Overlook just past Newfound Gap, looking East(ish) onto the North Carolina side.
Jay's from the same location:
This one I love because of the bright green - it is looking back toward Newfound Gap, which is just around the curve.
And some pictures I took while we were driving down the North Carolina side of the park.
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The view from the Deep Creek Overlook is spectacular - these are actually taken from two different, but adjacent overlooks. I love the patterns the clouds make on the trees below, makes me think of a patchwork quilt.
And one more stop, this time at Webb Overlook.
More pictures taken while driving, I didn't want to use up any more time stopping. The quality of these shots are not as good, and there's quite a bit of windshield and window glare in them, but it will give you an idea of descending the mountainside.
Do you see the truck coming toward us in that picture above? I had put my camera down in my lap to wait until it passed, so that it wouldn't be in my next picture. And do you know what happened next? Just as soon as I snapped that picture and lowered my camera, a bear walked out of the woods from the left and came almost right up to the road. I was so stunned that I couldn't even think about raising my camera to get its picture. It turned around before it got to the road and went back toward the woods. The last thing on my mind this morning was seeing a bear, I was just trying to get some good scenery pictures. And of course when we were in areas that I was expecting to have lots of animals, we hardly saw any! We did have an encounter later today that made up for my missed bear picture, so you'll have to stay tuned to hear about that.
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Oh my goodness! You could have split it three ways! Great updates!
Have you been keeping up with my blog? That's the only thing I've been keeping current on here, and if it hadn't been for all the work I've put into it previously, I don't know that I would have been able to discipline myself to do that. But this is the only place where I've got all my scout stuff written down at the moment, so I hated to just let it go! Joshua just earned his first bead, and will have his second bead in a few more weeks. We've got our second campout of the year coming up soon, the Polar Bear!
Can't wait to hear about the "encounter". LOL
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