So we left home on Friday at midday, I worked the morning, Dave took the day off so he had Amber the morning, I got home early and put her down and then we hit the road, it was a long trip there but no matter how long you are in the car, everything doesn't seem quiet as long as when you have the kids with you. As we hit the mountains it started to snow ... yeah you heard right, it started to snow !!! Thankfully it wasn't too much but it was so pretty to see the first snowfall of the season and to be up on the mountains where you could see the snow quickly accumulate on the trees high up. It was very pretty :-)
I had made a reservation for a dinner show called the Hoot 'n Holler Dinner show, I was hoping it wouldn't be corney coz it sounded very countrified but it was really funny, the food was not great, it was an Italian Fest which I thought I would love but it wasn't that good but the entertainment was really funny. There was singing and dancing but for the most part the entertainment was the audience, they were called up to do all sorts of things that were just laughable and golly Dave and I are both very lucky we were not called out coz we had the best seats in the house but mand did this guy pull the Mickey out of people and make them feel rightful asses !!! Anyway it was a good laugh, not something I would do again but we had seen the Dixie Stampede way too many times so we thought we were due for a change and most the other shows just didn't appeal to me.
Anyway the show was at Wonderworks which is kind of like a Discovery Place if you know what that is ... here is a picture of the building though, weird right :-)
After the show we just walked around and looked and played with stuff, some very interesting stuff actually, here you will see Dave in a simulation of a space ship. He also got to land a space shuttle on a computer game, that was fun to watch and he did a great job :-)
Here he was playing music on a large keyboard, it was crazy actually, the music was in front of you as you can see but if you didn't know the keys you almost had to turn around to see what key was where, which made no sense, so not much music was played by either of us !!!
David tried out the bed of nails ... he didn't complain too much but I think our kingsize bed at the hotel was a little more comfy :-)
Playing with absolutely huge bubbles, gosh the kids would have had fun here, next time they are going with !!!
There was tons of stuff to see, some of the interesting ones were going into a chamber where they simulated a hurricane, yeah I was a little wind blown after that, thank Heavens we did that at the end of the evening (hehehe). Then we sat at a table that looked like a regular diner table and they simulated an earthquake, golly that was hectic but in all honesty we don't think it feels anything like the real thing, maybe the vibrations yes but the shaking, not so much.
Anyway we walked around till probably 10 ish and then thought it would be time to go check in at our hotel and go try out our in room jacuzzi tub ... mmm mmm mmm now that was a good idea in all this snowy cold weather !!! Thankfully the hotel was really nice so we had a great night and well was I shocked when I opened my eyes the next morning and it was almost 9am, what a treat !!! So we rushed and went down to breakfast and then on to the rest of our day.
The entire Saturday we spent in Dollywood which is a combination of maybe Disney and any other amuzement park, but was great fun and even though the kids were missed and we would love to take them there too one day, we had a great time just going slow and now worrying about anything but ourselves :-)
Jade was sad when she heard we had done a Polar Express Ride, which was really cool, hopefully when we go again one day that ride is still there. We also did a steam train ride through the smokey mountains which all I can say was cold cold cold !!! All I was thinking was golly ... if this train breaks down now we are in trouble coz much of the trip there is nothing on either side of the rails but just a long drop down the side of the mountain, most of the trees had already lost their leaves but there was still many Fall colors to be seen so it was a pretty trip. I am thinking this train ride would be fun in Summer :-)
This weekend Christmas came alive in the entire town of Pigeon Forge but hugely in Dollywood, there were gazillions of lights, it was so pretty, nothing which a camera would show you nicely. I took video which I will try and get loaded soon but in the meantime here are just a few pics. They had these cute little things setup all over the show, I loved it and took way too many pics of them all but anyway here is Dave at one of them.
Ok two of them (hehehe) !!!
Then we went to take a tour on one of Dolly Partons old tour busses, she never stayed at hotels only ever stayed on her tour busses so this was interesting to see, we almost didn't get on coz it started to snow again but thankfully it stopped long enough for us to go take a look. One of those professional photographers took a great pic of Dave and I in the bus but $20 for a picture, are they crazy !!!
Here's the bus.
This was the bed inside the bus. I took other pics but really didn't want to put too many pics on this update but it was a cute bus, apparently she did all her own cooking too but never cleaned up after herself (hehehe) !!!
After that we walked through the Dolly Parton Meuseum which was very interesting too, everything from replicas of the house and church she grew up in, golly she really did come from nothing to what she is today !!! Humble beginnings to say the least and still her life is surrounded by God with all the good she does, she is amazing. There were pictures of her with just about every celebrity you can think of, gosh and so many of those mounted records, you know they award ones, too cool !!! What I liked though is they had cases of her clothing over the years and shoes gosh, all such pretty stuff ... and her wigs, do you know that we have probably never seen her without a wig, to me that was hard to believe but apparently very true.
The whole park smelled so yummy whether it was smells of food shown in the picture below or it was cotton candy smell or fresh roasted nuts ... oh my gosh everything smelt so very yummy !!!
We were good though, we had had breakfast at the hotel and we knew we were going out for a nice dinner after Dollywood so all we bought were butterfly fries with chilli and cheese and later some freshly roasted pecan nuts, yum !!!
Gosh look at those drumsticks but we walked on by :-) what amazed me was how cold it was, it was like below zero and snowing on and off but yet they cooked outside like this and the food stayed warm, that being said our fried got cold very quickly after we bought them, we could not eat them fast enough and they were cold !!!
This was taken during the day ...
This one later the evening ...
And can you spot Dave in this one ... that shows you how big it was. Oh so pretty :-)
I didn't know about this until I saw it but was excited to send Dave zip lining over a 5 zip course which was I think they said 3/4 of a mile long, here is the map.
Here he is suiting up, the entire experience was a little over an hour and he totally loved it thank Heavens but he said it was hard work. I took a video of the little part I could see but will add that later. The funny thing is it started to snow again just as he was getting started and I thought he was litterally going to freeze his butt off but he said he was so hot because they did a ton of walking and climbing I think from the end of one zip to the start of another, I am just glad he had fun !!!
There were many shows that we went too, some geared more towards kids and others were really good, I took pics but none of them came out too great. Anyway here are some other random pics that I took.
This was the one show, I think the best one we saw !!! The shows were all inside in big theatres, amazing actually and they were so nice and warm in all of them, it was often a nice break from the cold :-) I think we saw 4 or 5 which was about half of what they actually do have there.
This was outside one of the restuarants, there were a lot of old cars parked throughout the park, when you walked through those areas, you kind of felt part of that era.
Just some lights, I think most of these lights are there throughout the year and then they just add the Christmas lights this time of the year.
Saw this little roof top while I was waiting for Dave to finish his zip line.
There were lots of crafty people there, doing their crafts like they would in the old days, it was neat to see but golly they must have been frozen too coz it's inside but all the sides are open like you see here.
Thought this was cute there were a bunch of them set up for anyone to sit and play checkers if they so wished :-)
There was a musical Christmas tree display to the right of this, we saw it at night, think I got video, not sure ... but throught this was pretty :-)
Oh and just another show pic ...
The only think about Dollywood that I had not mentioned was the roller coaster rides, Dave and I went on three or four, only one of them during the day though, they were amazing. But I have to say doing these rides at night when there are NO lights on, oh my gosh, you have no idea where you are going to drop or be thown next, it was really scary and did I say cold, you try going those speeds when the temperature is like zero or below, oh my gosh ... cold, freezing cold !!! But so much fun and I am so very glad Dave and I got to experience this together, thank you again so much Tina !!!
Last four pics taken at our hotel.
This was taken from our bedroom door, if you looked across the parking lot you could see the little river which I could only imagine how cold it was.
We asked a little old lady to take this pic of us since we realized we really had none of us both on this trip :-(
How pretty is this little river, the girls would have totally loved to have fed the ducks but I think it would hav ebeen difficult to keep them out of the frozen water.
Kept the best for last (hehehe) but a half decent pic of Dave and I in the hotel lobby. I am so glad we got one kinda nice picture of us on our anniversary trip since pictures of us are rare anyway.
Dave was supposed to go indoor skydiving on the Sunday before we left but he decided that he didn't want to do it, the zipline was enough. So we took a slow trip back and stopped at a country store and bought some different kinds of jams and sauses, I love stores like that ... oh and a whole bunch of moutain apples, nothing like mountain apples :-) now I need to bake pie though !!!
Ok that's me for now, I will try and do the videos soon.
Enjoy.
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