librarian librarian

When Lauren asked me where we’re going on vacation this year, it brought back fond memories of last year’s vacation.  Memories of the beautiful mountains of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge.

One Friday night last summer, my brother-in-law (Donnie’s twin) drove up with his family from Baton Rouge and spent the night with us.  We planned to set out at daybreak Saturday morning for Gatlinburg. 

What a an adventure this trip turned out to be. 

First thing Saturday morning, before I even got breakfast cooked, my sister-in-law was popping a Phenergan for naseau.   Stomach bug.

Not to be deterred, we loaded up and headed out.  Three hours later we hit a snag in Birmingham …. traffic was backed up for miles and miles and miles.  It took forever to travel 3 little miles to finally get OFF the Interstate to take a detour.  Forever as in hours.

I always kinda liked brother-in-law’s Envoy.  BEFORE this trip.  By the time we made it into Pigeon Forge I was hoping he would trade vehicles before we headed home.

We spent the first two nights in this cabin….

Out our back door and down a little mountainside hill we had this wonderful little creek …

Driving up the mountain to this cabin, I kept wondering how in the world we would ever manage to get up and down this road if it rained.  But, the drive was beautiful.

The road was a pigtrail.  Dirt and gravel.  Wide enough for only one veicle.  That picture?  That picture was taken while I was IN THE VAN driving up the mountain.  I did not get out of the van to snap that photo and didn’t have to use the zoom to get the shot.

There.  In the bottom left corner of that picture.  See the van?  We are on the “road” to our cabin.  Our tires rolled along in ruts that dug into the road making the middle of the road higher.  It periodically scraped the underside of the vehicles. Well, it was scraping the underside of our van.  My brother-in-law’s Envoy ahead of us made it just fine. 

The van didn’t fare as well.  We punctured something underneath the van and trailed liquid for a little ways, but we didn’t know that until we arrived at the cabin.  The guys checked the van and well, we would be headed to a repair shop the next morning – since it was late afternoon vehicle repair shops were all closed. 

It was a nice little place, though, our cabin.  Tucked back in the MOUNTAINS!  And the little creek was just great.

See that little path they’re standing on?  Well, our road didnt’ look much better than that.

Do they look worried about the van that may cost an arm and leg to be repaired?

Early the next morning, we headed back down the pigtrail mountain to find an auto repair shop, my brother- and sister-in-law following along behind Donnie and me.  As we headed down the mountain we could see the trail of transmission fluid we had left the previous afternoon.  Not a good sign.  Donnie and I feared we were going to have to replace something to do with the transmission that HE said would be expensive, expensive, EXPENSIVE.  I can’t remember what he said it was, but I remember he said it was going to cost alota $$$.

But, later that afternoon we returned to the repair shop to pick up the van and it wasn’t as bad as we’d feared.  It was not the “out the wazoo expensive thing” my husband had feared it would be and we prayerfully made it back up the mountain … my brother- and sister-in-law dutifully following behind us, eyes peeled on our tail end to make sure we didn’t leave a new trail of transmission fluid. 

Oh, me.  The second night was not so good.  For me.  I caught the bug my sister-in-law had started the trip with and “I” took a pheneragan. 

Slept in the next morning, which wasn’t a bad thing since my wonderful husband was taking all our teens to Dollywood.  I secretly had never planned on enjoying that part of the vacation, but NOW I had a valid excuse to stay behind. 

I DON’T do this …

 

… even when I’m NOT sick!

NOT my idea of vacation.  But Donnie and the teenagers had a ball; Donnie rode as much as the kids.

Meanwhile back at the ranch cabin, the water tank was uncooperative.  Wouldn’t work.  Repairman couln’t get the tank to fill up completely on a regular basis.

So, while part of our vacation crew lived it up at Dollywood, the rest of us loaded up the truck (Envoy) and we moved to Beverly, new cabin that is ….

We weren’t thrilled about the move, especially since we were only staying 4 nights.  But our new digs were quite nice and we felt like big dogs in our three story, five bedroom, 4 bath mansion on the hill.  My sister-in-law did have quite a time with the electronic door lock, but we finally got inside and unloaded – again.  The agent said she had “upgraded” us and we sure felt upgraded alright. 

We had a nice balcony and grilled burgers.  It was a nice afternoon.  The four adults climbing down into the hot tub is another blog story.  If you know Uncle Ron … nuff said.

There was a problem with the air and we spent the night in misery, raised all the ground floor windows, turned all ceiling fans on high and all lights off.  The third floor bedrooms for us adults were quite cool, but the bottom two floors were quite warm.  Poor teenagers.  Cool adults and hey, who paid for the cabin anyway? 

We called and called and complained and complained the next day about the air conditioner.  I’m afraid the realtor was quite aggravated with us.   She insisted a repairman had checked the air and said it was working fine.  We were not happy campers.  When my sister-in-law stormed into the realtor’s office to make our complaint a bit more firm, well, things got heated and they threw my sister-in-law out of the office.

Anyway, us gals went shopping later that morning and left the guys at home in the heat. 

We hadn’t been shopping but a couple hours when the guys opened the door to …

… another real estate agent who was wondering WHAT in the world were doing in that cabin. ”This cabin is not rented,” she explained. 

“I know,” my brother-in-law told her, “but, there was a problem with the water in our first cabin so the realtor put us in this cabin.”  Ms Realtor said she knew nothing about that and asked for the name of the realty company we were using. 

Guess what?  It wasn’t her company.

We were in the WRONG cabin.

A frantic call from my brother-in-law sent us girls flying back up the mountain to pack and be OUT OF THE CABIN in 30 minutes!  I remember the drive back to the cabin after our short shopping excursion.  There’d be a few minutes of complete silence and then one of us would break out in laughter and we’d all lose it.  Could NOT beleive we had spent the night in a cabin that was not ours! 

The realtor was very nice, but insistant that we vacate in 30 minutes.  Please keep in mind how long it takes to pack for vacation.  And we had two families and groceries and kitchen gadgets and clothes that were hanging in closets and tucked into dressers. UGH.  My sister-in-law and I had just did this like YESTERDAY !!! 

And after all that complaining about the air conditioner….They really had sent a repairman!  He had been to the RIGHT CABIN which turned out to be pretty “cool” when we got there.  

So, the cabin where we were supposed to be staying  … here it is. 

Our third cabin of a four night vacation.

And, it was a nice cabin.  

 

Remember the second cabin?  See how we pulled up to the cabin?

 

And now the third cabin again …

Notice we backed up to the cabin for our THIRD unpacking of this four night vacation. You just don’t tend to be as confident pulling into your third cabin as you were for your first and second cabins.

As we packed up from cabin #2 we were all in fast mode.  We had 30 minutes and everyone was frantically trying to sling things into the cars.  I think we all did a good bit of laughing.  No one was happy about packing and moving again, but to think we had spent the night illegally in a cabin … too much.  What a hoot.

Later when we got unloaded at cabin #3, ha ha, we reached a point where it wasn’t funny.  See my brother-in-law sitting on the sofa.  Not happy.  Uncle Ron.  He is not happy.

I’m somewhere upstairs definitely not happy.  I was really a grouch.  I remember.  I couldn’t help it.  But, I love my sister-in-law.  See her in the kitchen? 

She’s making us something that will make us feel better !!!  And it did, it was a good night. 

Oh, and we missed out on white water rafting.  Scheduling was a little weird – turns out rafting trips are only offered on certain days – and we didn’t plan that in advance.  Donnie and the guys were extremely disappointed, but they enjoyed a little go-garting.  Donnie included.

I dont’ know what’s up with Landon in this picture and Jacob doesn’t look like he had a good time, but he really did.

  Lauren had more fun than the guys.

 I did get a shot of Landon, but Jake and Jonathan raced by too fast.  Jonathan, friend of Landon, what a story he had to tell his folks when he got home. 

   And Don, he gets in there with these kids.

Does he know how old he is?  You know what he would say?  He would say, “You’re as young as you feel, baby!”

Yeah, right.  I watched him crawl out of that go-cart, too.  Getting outta the cart for him had a “rolling the body hello ground” maneuver to it.

We had a nice relaxing last night in our third cabin.  Uncle Ron and Lauren discussed our next “family” vacation.  

       and they decided …

 … we won’t make reservations next time.  We’ll just see what cabin(s) we can get into!  Cabin Hopping!

Four nights, three cabins. 

It’s one we won’t forget!

Just look at these happy campers.  Gotta love family vacations!

 ~ June 2007 ~