I want to chase the daylight: pic of the week-Gatlinburg

So…this is a little late, but I had an amazing summer! I got to spend time with family, turned 19, went to Noccalula Falls with my dad and sister, took a ride on the Boomerang Express at VBS ’09, was introduced to the cutest little restaurant called Olexa’s with THE most AMAZING cake EVER!! Seriously! It’s in Mountain Brook, AL; go check it out for yourself! :) Anyways, one of the highlights of my summer was our “family trip” to Gatlinburg. I put the little “ ” on “family trip” because it was only me, my mom, Michael, and Emily. My dad and Josh stayed home because my dad had to work and Josh had football practice.

Anyway, we had a lot of fun! It was just me and my mom for the first few days, because the triplets went with our youth group on a camping trip. My mom and I don’t really get to have times like that that often, so it was nice. Then, we went and picked up Michael and Emily from their trip, and that was an experience, omigosh! It was rainy, we had no idea where we were going, they didn’t have cell phone service where they were staying at the Ocoee River…me and my mom were freaking out! But, we finally got hold of them and met up with them and got Michael and Emily and went back to Gatlinburg. During the rest of the week, we went shopping on the strip, tried going to Cades Cove once (but my dad had told us to go a different way than we were used to so we ended up getting lost and going to North Carolina haha), succeeded in going another time to Cades Cove (this time we went early in the morning. We went around the loop twice, the 1st time it was really foggy and almost eerie, and we saw a lot of deer. The 2nd time, we saw a few deer and 2 bears-one was 1 ft from the road and up in a tree!!), went to Roaring Forks (a got only a few feet away from a mama bear and her 3 cubs), met Captain Jack Sparrow, witnessed an Elvis Pressley concert, went to Ripley’s Aquarium of the Smokies, went to Rainforest Adventure Zoo (and saw a TON of snakes as well as kangaroos, crazy-looking chickens, aussie goats, birds, and Zaboomafoo and King Julian-the ring-tailed lemurs) had some AMAZING food, and some good ol’ family bonding time.

Since today’s Tuesday, that means picture of the week…but I’m posting pictures from my trip to Gatlinburg. Enjoy!

Me, Captain Jack Sparrow, and Em

Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies

what made it so funny was that Michael had said only a few minutes earlier "It would be funny if we got to South Carolina" and then we end up in North Carolina haha!