The Saturday Outing: That Was A Brilliant Idea

Friday: We drove. We drove. We drove. We drove.

To get to this.

But it turned out to be this.

Still looks nice, but when you wind down the day huddled in the bathroom making strategies for the weekend to keep from waking the children after driving 8 hours across the state, it is disappointing. Never mind that we had to turn on the air conditioner because we were literally sweating sitting in this room. (I know I'm a fan of cold, but even he was getting angry stewing in his own juices. We considered not even putting pajamas on the children.) With no separate bedroom as we had requested and a gigantic family size jacuzzi tub IN the room with us with tiled, hard-edged stairs around it waiting for someone to crack their head open, we decided to abandon the very touristy Pigeon Forge the following morning.


But not before making a stop in the bit more lovely Gatlinburg to see some sharks. It was cold out and a group hug was in order as the ticket master demanded military id cards for all five of us huddled there. (Yes, five. Benjamin did not grow another pink arm.) After Patric nearly jumped the desk, Ticket Master let us get away with adult id cards for entry. And I will say, $9 for a family of six to the aquarium is a pretty darn good price.

And we stumbled upon these guys right inside the door.

And more.

And that was awesome. This time Benjamin was the only one willing to participate in my hopefully group of four shot.

Sharks. The highlight for me.

And then we stopped and saw Santa.

That's enough for that tradition isn't it?

And after saving money on the second night in the hotel, we let the children pick out something in the gift shop. And THAT kept them happy for about five minutes.

And then, we drove. We drove. We drove. We drove back.

And 15 minutes from our exit the Interstate stopped and the low gas light blinged on. And we sat for half an hour with a flood of toys, angry children, and thoughts of having to walk home. So we turned around, made it to a gas station, and put 19.2 gallons of gas in our 20 gallon tank. Yikes.

And Saturday evening we made it home and tucked everyone in and were so very glad we had the return trip out of the way.