Gatlinburg: Cassidy's First Summer Vacation

The first week in June, we took our first family vacation. Daycare closes for 3 weeks each year, a week in June, a week in August, and the week between Christmas and New Years. These will be our new scheduled vacations each year.

For our first trip, we drove up to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. The drive is about 10 hours, and took us about 15 or 16. We left at 2:30am in the hopes of getting 4 or 5 hours in before Cassidy woke up. We made it exactly three hours. We pulled into a rest area to use the bathroom and switch drivers and our break wasn't fast enough... Cassidy woke up ready to eat. So after testing to see if she would go back to sleep with the car moving again, we stopped for breakfast 15 minutes later.

The rest of the drive was about the same; two or three hours driving, an hour or an hour and a half eating and playing. We found our condo in the mountains around 6:30pm.

Here's the view from the condo.

Our condo was through our TAN vacations that we bought while we still lived in Wisconsin. This was the first time we liked staying in a condo rather than a hotel. Having a bedroom for Cassidy and a kitchen for all of her bottle preparation and food was great!

We spent our week hanging out by the pool, hiking, walking around Gatlinburg (this only lasted one afternoon... it was way touristy - I'm not sure what I expected, but that wasn't it) and just spending time together laughing.

Cassidy wasn't too sure about the whole swimming thing the first time, but by her second dip in the pool, she was laughing, kicking her legs, and splashing.

We did two hikes one morning, one pretty easy and one moderate. The second one was actually a paved trail up to Laurel Falls. This is actually an "easy" trail, but pushing a jogger stroller up it upgraded it to moderate... my legs were burning and I was sweating pretty good.

Our second day of hiking was a moderate hike. I carried Cassidy in the baby bjorn on the way up and Jeff carried her on the way down. This hike was 2.6 miles round trip with an elevation change of about 350 feet. About half way up, we were stopped on the trail by a man hiking with his wife and daughter. He told us that just around the bend there was a mama bear and 2 or 3 cubs right on the trail! We sat with them for awhile and waited for mama and cubs to move off of the trail a bit. Other not so cautious (read: stupid) people just kept right on going to see the bears. After a bit, we joined the growing mass of people on the ridge to look down at the bears who ranged between 30 feet (one cub) and 40-50 feet (mama) from us.

This was still a bit too close for my comfort level, especially since I had Cassidy strapped to the front of me. We took a few pictures, waited for mama bear to start heading away from the trail where we were headed and back towards her cubs, and continued on our way. On the way back down we passed another group of people watching what I assume were the same bears. They said there were three cubs there. We didn't stay long as the man I spoke to said he didn't know where the mama bear was just then. Even as I write this, I'm amazed at the lack of caution some of the people displayed. No one tried to approach the bears or cubs, but they didn't appear the least bit uneasy about a three or four hundred pound animal (a mama with cubs at that!) 40 feet away! The bears didn't respond to the growing number of people, which is a good thing. I didn't feel like I was really in danger at any time, but I definitely wasn't comfortable either.

Grotto falls were beautiful. The trail continued further up the mountain, but increased in difficulty after passing behind the falls, so we stopped at this point.

We took a break at the falls to feed Cassidy and have a snack, and then started back down the trail again.

The last two days of our trip were sort of lousy. It rained most of thursday and the indoor pool was too really too cold for Cassidy to stay in for any length of time. With rain forcasted for all of friday as well, we packed up friday morning and hit the road friday afternoon with the intention of stopping along the way for the night. We drove south through the park on the way home, which would have been lovely if it weren't for the heavy fog. Things cleared up a bit towards the end of the national park giving us some beautiful views on the way out. Cassidy did pretty well until around 9 or 10pm, even playing in her car seat a bit between naps. She finally let loose with all out screaming around Auburn, Alabama where we quickly found a hotel with a pool.

The next morning, Jeff braved the cold pool to take Cassidy swimming to tire her out for the remainder of the drive. The last hour was a bit sketchy, with a lot of whining, crying, and playing peek-a-boo, but we made it back.