Family Vacation!

Remembering that first family vacation we took, is always an amazing memory. Going to the Smoking Mountains was such a great adventure, except for that one person who didn’t enjoy it at all due to fear. We tried to pick activities that she would be able to do and enjoy without being terrified. We went with another family who had already decided to go there, but we didn’t have any idea what this place was going to be like. We decided to take the long route and drove there. Even though we knew it was going to take forever to get there, it was such a beautiful scenery to drive through. Driving through those beautiful smoky mountains definitely made it worth the roughly 19 hours it took us to drive. It was just a great experience to be able to drive for that long and actually got to see how beautiful it was and how different the landscape is from where we live. Even though it was bumper to bumper for most of the trip and took us two hours to go roughly thirty miles was the fun part. We knew it was going to be busy because it was over the Fourth of July.   We knew flying would have been faster but we took our time getting there and enjoyed our trip instead of everything having to be a rush.

                Getting into those steep mountains was a bit scaring, while our driver was driving somewhat fast through those steep hills and taking those sharp curves what seemed way to fast. But my cousin and I just looked at the awesome beautiful scenery that we never had seen before which kept us occupied for most of the trip. It became more and more exciting because I knew we were getting closer and we were really ready to get there, as this was our first trip that we were old enough to remember.

                Finally, after about 19 hours of driving we arrived at our cabin. It was up in the mountains, which made it such a perfect place. We had so many great accommodations in this cabin that made our week very enjoyable. It had an arcade in the basement, a hot tub, a swimming pool and so much more. We spent a lot of our time at nights relaxing and doing these fun activities.

There are so many things to do there that we couldn’t get it all done in the amount of time we had there. Something really fascinating that we had the chance to do was, going to Gatlinburg to watch the Fourth of July parade and the fireworks at midnight. That was so pretty to see with the smoke coming out of mountains along with all the fireworks; trust me this would be something you would want to see.

                Another fun thing that we got to do that we wouldn’t have the opportunity to was, we went “Hillbilly Golfing”. This is where we had the chance to go golfing in the dark in the mountains. It was one of the neatest things that I got to do and had a blast. Even though it got a little scary, when u felt like you were going to fall down the mountain and I wasn’t the greatest at the golfing part. But it was the point that we had a fun time doing it.

                Horseback riding through those beautiful mountains was one of best things that I got to do. It was quite the adventure for only being eight and being on that big horse and having to keep control of the horse through those steep mountains and hills. But I handled it through the whole trail even when the horse were getting mad and bucking a bit. I don’t regret this experience, even though I was scared at first because I never really rode a horse before.

                If you ever get the chance to go to the Smoky Mountains, the one thing that you have to do is go white water rafting. This was the most amazing thing I’ve ever done in my life. We had a blast while we were on the raft, even though it was raining and beginning to storm. But that didn’t take away our chance of doing it. There are different levels that you can chose, and we chose the medium level. This was a really fast past and pretty rough. I got picked to be the lucky one who didn’t have to paddle.  I was lucky, but I was the one who flew up in the air when we went over a big log or rock. Trust me it was a little scary when you’re flying up in the air and they caught it on camera. But when I look back I realize how hilarious it was and begin to laugh.

                We did so many other memorable things plus the stuff that we didn’t even get to do because it was time to head back to Iowa. This is always such a sad feeling. But hopefully, someday we will go back there; maybe with my family. This trip was such a memorable trip and I wouldn’t regret any piece of it. After taking this trip it made us want to do more traveling.