mountains

 

chris and i finally got our long awaited "honeymoon" trip together last month and it was perfect and amazing.

we spent 5 days in the smoky mountains of tennessee and it was so beautiful and restful and wonderful.

we'd actually been planning this trip for awhile - ever since last july. it started out as an observation from me that we never get a whole week together because of the kids' custody arrangement which has them splitting half the week with their mother and half with us. even our` actual honeymoon was only 2 days. so chris said he'd work things out with their mother to keep the kids for their entire spring break in march.

we started planning a cruise but that proved to be too expensive so i found a timeshare deal that gave us 3 nights at a great resort in gatlinburg for only $100. i added 2 extra nights at a much cheaper place and suddenly we had a trip.

we decided to leave after 5 nights and drive to chris's brother's place in south carolina since we hadn't seen them in a couple of years (because they didn't come to our wedding but i'm not still a little bitter about that - nope, not at all) and family is really important to chris (even though none of his family managed to come to the wedding...oops, sorry, my bitter slipped out a little) and i wanted him to get to spend time with them (even though we've been up to their place 3 times and they've never, ever even talked about coming to see us) because that's just the kind of awesome wife i am. 

i'm pretty funny too. ;-)

so we left on a friday morning, stopped for the night just north of atlanta and met up with my brother and his wife for dinner then got up the next morning and drove through the smoky mountains national park to gatlinburg.

it was a spectacular drive even if the weather wasn't stellar. we stopped to stare at a bunch of elk along the way and it felt like we had stepped into a whole different world.

throughout the next 5 days we visited the aquarium, the longest pedestrian suspension bridge in the us, saw a pirate show, visited the titanic museum and enjoyed a lot of good food.

oh yeah, we also did a moonshine tasting which was so much fun!

the timeshare resort was absolutely beautiful and we had the most amazing condo type suite for the 3 nights. of course we had to endure a presentation and the hard sell but we resisted and it was totally worth it to lose 3 hours of our vacation for the great, inexpensive lodging.

we did a lot of fun things but i think my favorite adventure was booking a time for chris to forge his own knife. we used to watch a competition show about forging knives and it's something he's always wanted to do and i was happy to figure out a way to make that dream come true.

while i had a lot of fun watching him make his knives (he actually made 2, 1 was a birthday gift for his best friend and business partner) i had no desire to try it myself. all the pounding looked like way too much work for me but he loved it and can't wait to do it again one day.

all too soon it was time to pack up our car and leave the mountains. this was really very hard for me, i fell in love with it up there, but i did have a lunch with a former co-worker to look forward to.

my friend tracy moved away a couple of years ago to asheville, north carolina, which was going to be on our way to chris's brother so we stopped there at noontime and met her for lunch. it was great to see her again, such a treat.

we spent the next 2 days with chris's family and then headed home to pick up charlie and the kids in time for easter weekend.

and just like that, our lovely time together was over but i have amazing memories.