It’s still Thursday, but between Gatlinburg and the Smoky Mountains, I thought the number of pictures would overload my upload process!
After we entered the National Park, we stopped at the South Visitor Center so the grandkids could walk through the exhibits. While there, we had lunch, so we could drive through the park without the interruption!
While there, I talked to a Ranger about driving the Bus with car through the park. He noted it would be a busy day, and that parking the combined vehicles might give me some problems, but after getting through Gatlinburg, I did not see a problem!! He also told me that taking a side trip to Clingman’s Dome (a 10mile drive one way) might be an issue without a place to park or even get turned around! I solved the latter problem by deciding to unhook the car near the turn-off and driving in it.
As far as parking and driving the Bus and car, there was no problem. I got lucky……. there was plenty of parking where ever we went!
This story is best told by pictures. The grandkids thought the Park was the best part of the trip!! They got out at a lot of places………..
Aubrey, the wall climber!! She looked it over, and then, did it!
She made it!
Then, it was off to rock climbing!
Aubrey came down and got a phone to take pictures, and went back up………….
Including a selfie………
During our Smoky Mountain drive, I got a couple of good pictures of the Bus and car that I plan to use on the back side of our “business” (information) cards…..
About 5:00pm, we completed the 35 mile trip over and across the Smoky Mountains. We decided that it was time to head home to Victoria, and the kids were missing Mom and Dad. The GPS said it was almost 1100 miles to HOME, and I looked at the map and found a mountainous back road to head west toward Chattanooga where we would connect to an interstate highway.
As we headed west, we saw a lot of Kudzu, the vine that is taking over parts of the Southeast! We even saw a couple of abandoned houses that were almost completely hidden by it!
Here’s a few examples that were taken by Aubrey through the Bus’ windshield as we were moving, so we got what we got…
When the vine totally covers a tree, sign, home, or whatever, it sometimes makes for a really unique site!
By driving almost 700 miles on Friday, we arrived at home around 3:00pm.
The grandkids were well-behaved on the trip, and pitched in with tasks, such as hooking and unhooking the car, filling with diesel, breaking down and putting up the couches into bedding, cooking and housekeeping. Of course, Aubrey was much more help on the latter than Matthew!!
We all enjoyed the trip.
