VACATION 2011

(Days Thurs to Sunday)

Let us begin with an intro of the characters involved in this story......

Traveling in our van is Ryan, Megan, Delaney, Ryans girlfriend, Rachel and Todd and I.

And a fairly good number of bags I might add!

The story opens with car troubles!  Nothing like a little spice to start off a vacation.  We had some troubles with the van during the week and decided to give it a check up before leaving.  I was working a 1/2 day and we were scheduled to leave at 1pm.  By noon the van was still sitting in the drive, dead.  There was issues with the alternater and battery and we were having a problem finding a replacement for the alternater.  Bags were piled in the livingroom and we sat and waiting.  And waited.  And waited.  To the point that we were talking about either canceling the vacation or heading out a day later and running to get a new van!

FINALLY, 3 1/2 hours later than planned we pushed off!

 As we headed to the Washington beltway during rush hour (did I hear a gasp from all my northeastern viewers??  Yeah.  You know what that means don't you?!), we found out that we did not even have the correct direction from mapquest!  So there we were, in rush hour trying to survive in the never ending pile of cars and construction with no directions.  Only a map as our guide and our memory of how we went in the past! Which, I might add, did little to help since there was detours and changes all over the place!

We finally made it around and through and decided to stop for dinner.  Which was pretty much about the time we were supposed to be stopping at our 1st hotel which was easily a good 5 hours away yet!  We did not get to the hotel until 12:30am!!!  We were slap happy and tired!  We took the kids in, left the bags in the van and fell on the 1st bed our body came too and slept in our clothes!

We still had to make it to the next hotel in Cherokee, NC and so we woke, grabbed clothes and headed out the next morning on schedule.

FINALLY THERE...... 

Here we are at the Unto These Hills show and a visit to the Oconaluftee Indian Village

Crossing over the Smoky Mountains and heading to our final stop in Pigeon Forge, TN

And a stop to meet a new friend......

Ride 'em cowgirl!

Our trip horseback riding. I will share the pics with you but will say that I found out that riding and taking pictures at the same time is a bit hard so excuse any blurry ones that pop up!

 The Crew.......