We had planned to visit the National Park today and do some hiking. However, we were a little concerned about Patrick getting dehydrated and rented an ATV last minute. We had never been to the Cades Cove area and decided to take the ATV to explore. It was packed! It is a one way in and one way out road, so you can't pass other cars. We definitely had to stop multiple times for people to search for bears for 30 minutes or so.
We stopped at a few of the churches and log cabins to check them out on the way.
The ATV was so fun. I wish we had been more prepared. Michael's phone died and my phone didn't have music downloaded onto it. There is no cell service in the park, so unless you have it already downloaded you can't listen to it. We also didn't pack a cooler. If we did it again, we would make sure music was downloaded on our phones and we had a big cooler!
We stopped at a creek to play for a little bit before we had to turn in our ATV. Playing in the creek and skipping rocks is always the kids favorite part.
Cades Cove is so pretty and I am really glad we went to see it. However, I don't think I would do it twice. It takes such a long time and you can't predict how long others in front of you will stop and look around!
We had never done a dinner show in Pigeon Forge and decided to try one out. The Pirate Dinner Show was right next to our hotel. We let Caitie get a princess mermaid makeover before the show started.
It was a good show and I thought the actors were really talented. We did have trouble paying attention because there was so much going on and we had to help the kids cut some of their food. I would have liked a little bit of time to eat before the show started. Michael and I thought the food was great, but the kids were not fond of the food. No one liked the dessert, which is really saying something from this crew!
Caitie was begging to go on the Ferris Wheel afterwards, so we took a trip.
Since no one liked the dessert we got ice cream cones and sat outside and watched the fountains one last time!
The next morning we went into the National Park to take a picture with our usual sign and play in the river a little bit before heading home. It's a little bit of a tradition for us to go to the Smoky Mountains in the summer, so I was glad we could make it happen this summer amongst all the chaos!
It was a fun couple days in one of our favorite places!
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