The Smokies

I am off this week on spring break and EZ and I had decided we wanted a little mini vacation so we headed to Gatlinburg, TN for a few days which is on the TN border of Smokey Mountain National Park. I would say Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge is like Myrtle Beach of the mountains, there are mini golf places and go kart places every block and tons of show things. I don't know what I was expecting but it was much different than I thought.

We left Friday and were suppose to arrive Friday night and we were about 25 miles from Gatlinburg on the NC side of the Smokies when we arrived at a closed road due to ice/snow. The detour was 3 1/2 hours around. It was already 9pm at this point so we started to drive back the way we came and stayed the night in Asheville. It started as a very long start to our trip. We did a little shopping and eating and some hiking. We did not end up skiing as there really wasn't a lot of snow on the ground-actually none in Gastlinburg-only snow up the mountain a bit, and the ski place in Gatlinburg is pretty small.

On one of our hikes up Chimney Tops Mountain, the trail was covered in snow. It made our 4 mile roundtrip hike take a total of 3 hours. There were parts that were really steep and take that covered in packed down snow makes it really slippery. On the way down, it made so that we were practically skiing on the trail just on our shoes sliding our way down the mountain. Quite an adventurous hike. I must say that it would be beautiful here in the fall when all the trees are changing colors...as it was practically all the trees are bare. We came back a day early so that we could enjoy some down time at home and went and saw Avatar in 3D yesterday which was really good.

Here are a couple photos from our trip:


A short hike to a waterfall our first day.


The view from our balcony where we stayed.


At the start of the hike up Chimney Tops


Me sliding down the trail trying to stay balanced!