We decided to make one last trip before summer ends (and ours is about to end since I start student teaching this coming Monday). We had a wonderful weekend in Gatlinburg and the surrounding area. We went up Friday afternoon, checked into our hotel, walked all around Gatlinburg, and then grabbed some dinner. After dinner, we went to the Smoky Mountain National Park visitor's center and did a little hike to a waterfall behind the visitor's center. Griffin walked almost all of it by himself and he loved walking on the railroad ties like they were balance beams. (Unfortunately, we didn't get the camera out of the car before we set off on our hike...so no pictures of this one.)
On Saturday, we started the day with a hike at Laurel Falls. This is a relatively short, easy hike and it is paved the whole way so we were able to take the stroller. This isn't usually a very impressive waterfall, but we had a lot of rain Thursday and Friday so it turned out to be great timing on our part. In fact, the waterfall was so loud that it scared Griffin when we got too close.
After our hike, Matt wanted to drive over to Cherokee, NC for lunch (about 30 miles from Gatlinburg). After lunch, we decided to do another hike and stopped at the visitor's center on that side of the park to find out what trails would be options for a 2-year old. The ranger gave us 2 options and we chose Deep Creek trail in Bryson City, NC. We were driving through downtown Bryson City in search of the turn-off to Deep Creek when I noticed some cute Thomas the Train shirts hanging outside a little shop. I told Matt that we would have to stop there on the way back. We passed another store and a little train depot...and then all of a sudden I saw a BIG Thomas engine on the train tracks! We found a place to park and got out to go see Thomas and take some pictures. Then we found out that it was a whole event called "A Day Out with Thomas." We bagged the second hike and bought tickets for the next train ride.
After the train ride, we visited the other attractions that were part of the event--the train tables, Thomas made entirely out of Legos, the bounce train...and the sno-cone vendor at the storytelling tent.
I was planning to buy Griffin a Thomas shirt anyway, but he ended up having to wear it home because he was soaking wet from spilling his sno-cone on himself. We also couldn't resist buying him a couple of new trains for his Thomas train set at home. Here he is wearing his new shirt and proudly showing off his new trains.
There was also a Lionel electric train museum (a permanent fixture in Bryson City) that we were able to tour as part of the event. Griffin was awestruck by all of the trains lining the walls in the display cases and by the HUGE train set that took up an entire room.
This was such a fun afternoon...especially since we had no idea what was going on until we just happened to run right into it! After all of that excitement, we headed back to Gatlinburg for dinner and a round of putt-putt.
We finished our action-packed weekend with a visit to the Ripley's Aquarium. Matt and I had been once before when it first opened, but this was Griffin's first visit. It is a great aquarium--definitely worth a visit if you're in the area. The best part is the long tunnel that goes through the tank so that the fish and sharks are swimming right over your head.
