History Lesson: Cades Cove and Everything That Goes With It

One reason I love Gatlinburg so much is because every year when I was little that's where my family would take vacations. Until this trip I had not been to Gatlinburg since I was a kid. (Except for chaperoning youth trips which doesn't really count because we weren't hardly there long enough to breathe in the mountain air before we had to go. So we didn't get to do any of this stuff you see on my blog!!) I just think it's so neat that the last time I was here as a child I had no clue that the next trip would be with my HUSBAND!! Me and Scotty love museums so this was a perfect date for us!

Of course, our day at Cades Cove started out with a trip to the grocery store. You can't do Cades Cove unless you have a picnic!! In case you didn't know, Scotty and Marc have been BFF since the womb pretty much. They are pretty much the same person, both drama queens to say the least. And every time they get together, it's always something.

This, of course, happens to be a dispute over what chips should be eaten on the picnic. You can't take them anywhere!!

Me and Summer just smile because we know there's no two like our two. We're there for each other when the drama gets to be too much!!

After the grocery store, we were off. And on the way we decided to hike into the mountains to see Laurel Falls. It was well worth the blood, sweat, and tears to get there.

Mountain Men

Yay!! We finally made it!! And p.s.- that water is sprinkling us!!

This is Cades Cove. It's a park - open air museum - with scenery and homes, churches, buildings, etc. from the 1800's which were once inhabited by small mountain communities. Don't you wish you could wake up to this view every day?

This is the Primitive Baptist Church in Cades Cove. In the 1800s men sat on one side while women and children sat on the other.

This is the Grist Mill. It actually grinds corn into meal and is sold in the Cades Cove Gift Shop. The last time I was here they were having to repair the wall to the left side of the door because a bear had busted through trying to get to the corn meal!! Scary huh??

I think this is an ancient lawnmower!!

I used to play in this mountain stream behind us when I was little!! I think it's so crazy that we have home videos of my in that stream with my bathing suit on and now I'm walking around with my DH!!

Isn't this wildlife so sweet??

Marc and Summer look worn out!!

This looks like a creek bed, but usually it's a river that people tube down!! Can you believe that? It doesn't look like it now because they haven't gotten a good rain in a while. Our boys were NOT too tired to crawl down in there!! It was at least an 8' drop in some places. They like living on the edge and me and Summer couldn't let them have all the fun, so we crawled down there and joined them!!

After our strenuous day in the mountains we decided to take it easy that night. We went out to eat and walked up and down the strip in Gatlinburg.