Tennessee Girls Trip

As promised - here is the rundown of the trip... which can also be known as the tour de Starbucks. HA! We had a lovely time, and even got through the two hour delay on the runway before we took off. I've never seen a line of planes that long... but eventually we got our turn, and got on the way to Knoxville.

This is our cabin - it was absolutely beautiful! It had two king sized bedrooms, and two really big soaky bath tubs... and if you look on the right of the cabin - that is one of our three porches... it's the screened in one with the hot tub.

Here Lynne and Cathi are relaxing and enjoying the view from the second floor balcony... it was gorgeous!

Lynne and I at lunch on day 2 - it was an English Pub, and was very quiet... we were in a craft village, and found lots of fun stuff to shop for. They had homemade goodness everywhere we looked - from candles, to food products, and even homemade soap products.

My sisters, Cathi and Cindy sharing a shake with me... it was at a wonderful old time soda shop - so we couldn't resist taking a small indulgence.

My beautiful sisters on the sky tram up the mountain... what a wonderful way to take in the beauty of the Smoky Mountains.

At the top of the mountain they had a black bear habitat, and this is the baby of the bear group - his name is TJ and he was getting a snack from one of the keepers in this picture.

This is another of the bears, relaxing... the keeper told us that these bears live longer than they do in the wild, and grow up to 750 pounds (this one was exactly that weight). In the wild they typically only reach about 350 pounds.

Here we all are enjoying a scenic view... this was on a back round around Gatlinburg where we could see the entire town... it was amazing!

Gatlinburg has a fabulous aquarium, with a really long tunnel that you ride under and watch the sharks. Here Lynne is picking up a horse shoe crab... and he's trying to escape!

We took a scenic drive up the mountain through the Smoky Mountain National Forest, and Cindy needed a little "snack" for the road... for someone allergic to dairy products - I sure do have a lot of pictures of us eating them!!

A view from one of the areas on the drive that we could pull over to take pictures.

Here are the sisters at the same stop looking happy and healthy!

Ya'll - I fell in love with babbling brooks on this trip... they are wonderful, and I wish I could have this one in my backyard!!

Cathi, Cindy, and Lynne stopped to put their feet in for a minute. Apparently it was VERY cold water, but well worth the shock to the system.

On the way home, Cathi and I had a three hour delay getting home - so she took a little bit of time to get a chair massage. Our flight was supposed to leave at 6:30 local time, but didn't leave until 9:45... and the airport shut down completely by 7!! We didn't have much else to do other than try to keep ourselves occupied by any means we could find.

The trip was fabulous, and we all enjoyed ourselves tremendously. Lynne suggested that we do this annually - so we'll see how that works out. John missed me a lot, and told me that he has no desire to become a bachelor again... so I haven't mentioned to him the possibility of a repeat trip! We'll wait and bring that up after he gets tired of being mothered again. HA!