Great Smoky Mountains

This past weekend we traveled several hundred miles to spend time with friends in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. The friends on this trip were: Arthur and Becky; Andrew, Autumn, Samantha (7), and Makaela (5); Izzy, his sister Eleanor, and her boyfriend Andre; and Brian and I. While we spent a great deal of time driving, it was worth it and we had a wonderful time. Thursday night and Friday morning Arthur and Becky were our hosts in Kentucky...they gave us a place to sleep, food to eat, a tour of their successful chiropractic office, treated us to wonderful Thai food, and gave us a scenic driving tour of the rolling hills and horses of Kentucky.


Friday afternoon we drove down into Tennessee to the Gaitlinburg and Pigeon Forge area. After enduring the bumper-to-bumper traffic in town, we escaped up into the mountains to our rented cabin. It was a beautiful cabin with plenty of space for everyone...three levels with three decks and a porch to enjoy the views. We shared the cooking and cleaning responsibilities and ate a lot of delicious food. Becky cooked Indonesian curry Friday night, accompanied by Izzy's creative dishes he had prepared ahead of time. Sabbath morning Andrew and Brian whipped up an amazing spread for breakfast. We picnicked for lunch and ate pizza and ice cream for supper. Sunday morning we had haystacks...yes, haystacks for breakfast...Arthur didn't want to miss out.

With so many musically talented people along, we did a lot of singing and listening to music. It was a worshipful experience sitting on the floor surrounded by harmonizing voices. Late Sabbath morning we traveled into Great Smoky Mountains National Park and hiked to beautiful Laurel Falls (see picture below on left). Sabbath afternoon provided for an enlightening discussion of the role that younger people play in the church today.

Saturday evening I was introduced to a new game...everyone else had played before when I was out of town last year for Darcia's wedding. Izzy is the creator of the game...he has created a computer program with a selection of nouns that teams give one word clues for until their team guesses correctly. Each clue means one less point. If your team guesses with one clue, you get 10 points. If your team guesses incorrectly, the other team gives a clue for 9 points. This continues until 5 points are available and if nobody guesses by then, it is time to move on to the next word. For example, one of the words that I had was comfort. I gave the clue "blankie" because Autumn had told us how Makaela had lost her blankie on vacation and Autumn had been able to find a new one just like it. Autumn "got" my clue and we increased our score by 10 points. We played guys against girls...the girls won by a lot. This was a good thing since the guys had won last time...I guess Brian and Andre had even done a little victory dance (sorry I missed seeing that). Us girls did our own victory spin around the guys sitting dejectedly on the couch.

Sunday was a bit of relaxing until those of us who had to work here in the Quad Cities on Monday had to get on the road. After a quick stop at Cracker Barrel for a Father's Day present for Izzy's dad, we slowly made it back to the interstate. We encountered heavy rain that slowed us down and we had interesting restaurant experiences at Waffle House and Wendy's (in Urbana, IL). We kept on moving and made it home around 10:30. We had a great time following Izzy, Eleanor, and Andre all the way to Kentucky and home again.

Here is one of my favorite pictures of Sammy and Kaela, wide awake at 6:30 a.m. Eastern time (5:30 at home). They weren't the only ones awake...everybody else woke up with the birds as well.

Thanks again to Arthur and Becky for being our travel coordinators. We had a wonderful time! See Arthur and Becky's blog for their remembrances of the weekend.