Thursday, November 6, 2008

October in Pigeon Forge--Day 2

We had plans to attend church on Sunday morning while we were on vacation. Sarah was excited about this prospect. She asked if we were taking everyone to our church. "No," I said. "This will be a different church. Grandma and Grandpa picked it out."

"Oh!" Sarah exclaimed. "Are we going to their church?"

"No," I said again. And for lack of a better way to explain it, I said, "We're going to a vacation church!" Sarah really liked this idea. She eagerly dressed and got ready to go to the "vacation church." (People who read the post about the party church may be wondering about our theology at this point).

Unfortunately, anyone who has read Robert Burns knows what happens to the "best laid schemes of mice and men." Sunday was definitely a day of plans going "a-gley."

Problem #1: Traffic as we convoyed to church was still atrocious. Problem #2: We couldn't actually find the church Darrell and Jeannie wanted to attend. We tried valiantly but alas, no such luck. We ended up not making it to church that Sunday morning.

This both confused and distressed Sarah. She loves church and really wanted to attend. Plus, we had told her that we were going to church, so she couldn't figure out why suddenly now we weren't. Third, Pigeon Forge has quite a few churches. Sarah spent the rest of Sunday (and a few days after) pointing out every single one. "There's a church! Why don't we go there? There's a church! Can we got to that one??"

Since church didn't quite work out, we drove into Gatlinburg for Plan B. This turned out to be another misadventure for the day. I mentioned that traffic between Sevierville and Pigeon Forge on Saturday afternoon was horrific. Traffic between Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg on Sunday morning was even worse! I have never seen traffic this bad. It took forever to drive the few miles between the two cities. Then there was the matter of parking (we actually lucked out on this one, and we managed to park both vehicles in the same parking lot). Finally, it was now lunch time, and we needed to EAT!

And here misadventure #3 occurred. I had done a lot of research on restaurants in the area, and I compiled a list of ones that got rave reviews. One such restaurant was right across the street from where we were. However, it was CROWDED. We're talking line backed out the door crowded. And we were hungry now. We could also smell something incredibly yummy wafting through the air, but we couldn't quite pinpoint where it was coming from (sorry, "from whence it came"). So we took a gamble on a restaurant that had not shown up in any review and did not have any enticing aromas emitting from it.

We stuck to the restaurants that made the reviews after that. :-p That's all I'm going to say. However, we did get a good photo op out of it, so all was not lost. :)



We returned to the cabin after lunch and spent the remainder of the day quite lazily, thank you very much. We napped and read and generally had a "day of rest."


My favorite way to relax...with a good book.




Enjoying the back porch swing on a warm fall day...




Grandpa wasn't the only one who napped that afternoon...he was just the only one who got caught on camera! Sarah, Little Miss Nonstop Energy, can't figure out why Grandpa needs a nap anyway!



And that was Day 2! Day 3 to follow! :)

2 comments:

Tara said...

Good times! I miss that cabin...

Unknown said...

So does Sarah! I don't think she likes our house nearly as well. :-p (Who could blame her?).