Vacation! The Great Smokey Mountains, Pigeon Forge, TN

We just got back from the most lovely family vacation to the mountains!
Vacations seem to come in two varieties: the beach vacation or the mountain vacation, right? Two years ago, we did the beach version and this year, even though everyone was highly in favor of another cruise, we decided to go for the mountain variety! It was amazing, lovely, relaxing, and so memorable: it was Braelynn’s first official vacation!

So, come along, and let me take you on a photo-journal of our trip! Don’t say I didn’t warn you though, it’s a little lengthy, but I have no excuse! I’m a photographer! It’s simply what I do.

It’s an 8 hour road trip to get down to Pigeon Forge, TN, so we hit the road Friday night & stopped half way in West Virginia. It was so nice to split the driving up that way – it made it easier on everyone, but especially Brealynn. I mean, let’s be honest, she’s only 16 months old, but she’s already a pro at lengthy car trips, since we make the trek up and back to Derrick’s parents almost once a month!

We played this hilarious game on the way to West Virginia that night that Ruby taught us all. It’s a story telling game and needless to say, we were all crying from laughing so incredibly hard! It was literally the best way to kick off our vacation!

Stopping in West Virginia provided Braelynn’s first first of the trip: her first night in a hotel! She did so well – we actually slept way better than I thought we would!

Since we got 4 hours of the driving out of the way the night before, waking up and driving south into Tennessee seemed so short!
My Mom should be a travel agent because she’s simply the best at finding the perfect places to eat and stop and stay – so no surprise when we stopped at this little “tourist trap” as we got into Pigeon Forge – that provided the most delicious BBQ in the most beautiful scenic setting! We did see our first snake there, but, we won’t talk about that.

Then it was off to WalMart to load up on fresh food for the week!

We stayed for the week in a cabin on Dollywood property (we stayed in the one called Rejuvenation). We were all the way at the top of the mountain & we literally had the best view! All of the cabins overlooked the Great Smokey Mountains, but because our cabin sat right on the edge, our view was better than anyone else’s!

Much to Derrick’s delight: from up so high, we also had a spectacular view of Dollywood! And rising above the trees, we could see several coasters – it was like heaven for my roller coaster nerd husband.

When we arrived to our cabin on Saturday evening, after everything was unloaded & unpacked, a few people hopped in the hot tub on the 3rd story of our deck. Apparently, it was a bit full, and so it overflowed. Braelynn enjoyed playing in the “rain” down on the 1st story deck!

We spent several days at Dollywood. In the weeks leading up to our trip, when we would tell people that we were going to Dollywood for a week, they would just stare back at us: you’re really going to spend a whole week at a theme park? Yep! If you know my husband at all, you know that he’s infatuated with roller coasters, so having open to close access to coasters he’s never ridden before is a dream. Also, if you’ve never been to Dollywood, you know that there is more than enough to keep you busy at the park for a week plus! So many shows and performances and rides and shops and displays and demonstrations! Plus, we went during their Bluegrass festival, so there were even more things to do, hear, and see!

The sunsets up on our mountain were simply stunning.

Waking up to this view every day though – wow.

One evening, after we had gotten back from the park for the day and were eating dinner & hanging out – we noticed a rainbow! It must have been raining miles and miles away, and from our view, we could see it!

Morning snuggles.

So, we loved our cabin – not just for it’s 3 levels of decks, it’s hot tub, it’s incredible views, the open floor plan, spiral staircase, open loft, but also for it’s game room downstairs! There was foosball, air hockey, a classic arcade machine (that had PacMan, Galaga, Frogger, Mappy etc. on it), and a pool table. Literally every waking moment – someone was downstairs playing pool. And not only would people be playing, but there was an ongoing list of who was playing the winner of that round next. We had so much fun!

And this little munchkin really wished that she was a little taller so she could play too.

See why they call them the Great SMOKEY Mountains?

So, yes, we spent a lot of our time at Dollywood, but we did some other things as well – like hiking the Gatlinburg Trail. It was gorgeous and we saw some awesome things – like a bear! And a blue heron! Mom & Ellen saw a snake! And Dad saw the bear twice! Prepare for an overload of lovely nature photos!

Notice anyone missing? Since our hiking trip was going to be capped off by some shopping, the boys decided so skip out and spend the day riding as many roller coasters as they could at Dollywood.

Braelynn was not a fan of the bear! So funny!

That night we stopped at this “mom & pop” BBQ place that some locals told us was the best ever. Unfortunately, I can’t testify whether that was true or not since I was still so full from lunch that I didn’t eat any! It was a fun stop though & surely looked delicious!

In the evenings, whoever wasn’t downstairs playing pool was on the 3rd story deck, chilling in the hot tub!
And that’s our cabin, taken on the way down the mountain.

Some more Dollywood pictures!

The one day for lunch, we ordered a “Lumberjack Pizza” – they say it feeds 8-10 people with it’s monstrous size of 30″! It was HUGE! And, honestly, it was some of the best pizza we’ve had in a long time!

Braelynn is super into birds right now. She loves to watch birds from the window & see them out in the yard. So, we knew she’d love the Birds of Prey show at Dollywood! Yep, spot on. She was enthralled!

Dollywood is a gorgeous park – definitely not a concrete jungle! It is so pretty just to walk around and look at all the lovely scenery! Braelynn loved (you guessed it) the ducks!

And this is the part of the story that gets a little sad: one of the main reasons we wanted to go to Dollywood this year was for Derrick. Did I mention that he’s a huge roller coaster fanatic? Well, he is (if you don’t believe me, hop over to his Instagram account or his YouTube channel) Anyways, Dollywood is opening a brand new coaster this year: Lightning Rod. It’s the first of it’s kind in the entire world: a launching wooden coaster. It also boasts to be the fastest wooden coaster in the world. Naturally, Derrick was little-girl-meltdown-ecstatic over the thought of riding it. The coaster was slated to open at the end of March, but they had some technical difficulties so the opening was pushed back to the end of April. Our trip was planned for mid-May, so we spent many a nail-biter evening, talking about how much we hoped that the coaster was open in time for our trip. As we got closer and closer to our vacation, Derrick checked Dollywood’s website (and other roller coaster news sites) every day, hoping for the good news that it was open. The last we heard was: it was close, but they were still messing around with certain things and it simply wasn’t ready to open yet.

We spent a week at Dollywood. And every day, Derrick watched the coaster. By mid-week, they were doing test-runs with water-filled dummies. A really good sign that they were confident in the mechanics and simply running the last of the tests. I think we were all praying for the ride to open before we left Tennessee. I know I was. I just wanted Derrick to be able to ride this incredible, one-of-a-kind coaster, while we were there.

It never opened while we were there. We drove away from the park Friday night, totally bummed out that he didn’t get to ride the ride. We honestly didn’t care about riding it ourselves, we all just knew how upset he was to be so close, yet so far.

The kicker? We left Tennessee on Saturday and two days later, on Monday, they “soft” opened Lightning Rod.
(he could see it from our mountain, so if we ever didn’t know where Derrick was, he was most likely outside, looking at it, no joke)

But! Back to your regularly scheduled good news! Braelynn had a fabulous vacation!

Mom, channeling her inner Dolly Parton.

Last day at Dollywood!

Brealynn did so well the whole trip – until Friday morning. She woke up with a fever & simply not feeling well. We blamed it on teeth (she has like 4-5 teeth right on the edge of busting through), but I’m not convinced she didn’t have some sort of virus. Her fever broke after about 24 hours, but then she came down with a cold and cough and ear infection – poor babe!

Since my husband is a huge coaster nerd, I had to get him some nice coaster photos while we were in the park!

Sibling selfie!

We left early Saturday morning and drove the 8 hours home. It was a long day in the car, but with everyone’s help, the Baby Einstein puppets, and Ruby’s DVD player, we made it through without too many tears!

I can’t really believe that it’s over! It seems like we waited and waited and counted down the days for so long – and suddenly – it’s all over! It went so incredibly fast, but we had such a great time! We already can’t wait for the next vacation! Everyone is pining over a cruise again! We’ll have to wait & see!

All of the images in this post were either taken with my Canon 5D Mark ii or my iPhone 5S – if the quality of an image looks off, it’s probably because I took it with the camera I had most readily available!