Relaxing day in Gatlinburg 10/25/2012

After going on hikes the first couple days, we figured we'd enjoy a nice relaxing day at the cabin.

 Well, most of us were staying at the cabin.  Theresa and I wanted to go visit downtown Gatlinburg.  Driving through the day before, we noticed a Kilwin's ice cream!  When we're in Florida visiting Disney World, we'll often stop by the town of Celebration and go to the Kilwin's there to enjoy the toasted coconut ice cream.  Mmm.  Even though it was 10am, we had to stop by and grab some.

We walked up and down the main strip.  It's a total tourist trap.  Cheap shops with trinkets, cheap food, people hawking discount tickets to shows, etc.  
We did happen to find something interesting though.  As we were walking, I suddenly stopped and pointed out wad of cash on the ground to Theresa.  She picked it up and looked around to see if anyone looked like they had lost something.  She even ran after an older couple and asked them if they happened to drop anything.  No one said they did and there weren't any receipts or anything else to identify where the money came from, so Theresa and I left $72 richer.  

Another look at the steep driveway.

Back at the cabin, everyone sat out on the deck enjoying the sunshine and the view.

And when the sunshine got to be too much, we headed down to the 2nd deck and enjoyed the view with a little more shade.  

And I just happened to notice a persimmon tree growing up beside the house.  Theresa and Chi were excited and picked off as many as they could reach.

Then Dad, Rich and myself all went underneath the house to get at the tree from that side and get more for them.

I still hadn't woken up early enough to catch the sunrise while we've been here, so of course on the last day, I had to remedy that.  I played around with the processing on a lot of these.  The regular pictures were all really dark on the mountains and bright on the sky.

A few more photos of our awesome cabin and it was time to hit the road.

For the most part the drive back home was fine.  That's until we hit rain.

The rain was horrible!  It slowed us way down and caused a 9 hour drive to feel a lot longer and a lot more stressful.

We had a good reception though once we got back.  Looks like I'm a jungle gym.

We were supposed to fly out on Sunday, but Southwest ended up overselling our flight and we got bumped.  One more day in Michigan!
 
Playing Hide-and-Seek with the kids is tradition, but we didn't get a chance to earlier.  Since we got bumped, we have some extra time.  Regular hide-and-seek had been difficult as they've gotten bigger.  Time for a new twist.

It starts with 3 pairs of sunglasses and a luchador mask.

Then we all head down to the dark basement to play hide-and-seek. 

It was really hard to see apparently.  Abby yelled "I see you!" at this doll for 15 seconds before deciding it wasn't a person hiding.

And we also spent some of our extra time going to the movies.

Hotel Transylvania was a lot better than we were expecting.  

All too soon it was time to head to the airport and fly home.  We had a great time visiting everyone and it was great to visit Gatlinburg with both sets of parents!