At the Corner of Mountain Loft Road and Quail Lane...

... is a lovely house that Jack's mom generously rented for all of us to stay in last week on vacation in Townsend, TN, which is just outside of all the hustle and bustle of Gatlinburg. We had a fun week of hiking, wild-life spotting, tubing, zip-lining, shopping, and eating. :) Oh my goodness, the food! But what's a vacation without good food and the need to lose a few pounds when you get back home? ;-)

As we were leaving, I thought I'd get everyone to help me figure out our 'best moments' from the trip so that I could share those here. So here are some winners from the week:

Best Adventure:

Smokey Mountain Zip-Lines! It's hard to express just how much fun this was - worth every penny it cost! I'll put a link to their web-site in here in case any of you reading are looking for fun in Gatlinburg... http://www.smokeymountainziplines.com/ They have created a series of ziplines that start way up on the side of a mountain and take you zipping from platform to platform through the trees to the bottom of the mountain. They start easy and get a little harder/faster/higher as you go along. The last couple of lines are their 'super-lines,' one of which runs down the side of a mountain for 850 feet! It's quite a ride. :) The video below is of Mackenzie and Zip-Line Instructor Joe racing down the super-zip line.

Best Surprise:

All of Jack's family are big soccer fans, and both World Cup Semi-Final matches were being played during the week that we were in Gatlinburg. We pretty quickly realized that our cable in the house did not have ESPN, so we needed to find somewhere else to watch the game on Tuesday. So we decided to make that our day of shopping in Gatlinburg and then hope that we could find a place to watch the game in town. Well, let me tell you, we couldn't have ended up in a more perfect situation. As we drove into town, we noticed a place called the Hellbender Grill. Actually, I noticed it because the name caught my attention - ha. But then Katie saw that they were showing all the World Cup Games. We made our way back there at lunch time, and because there were 10 of us, they actually seated us in a room where we were all alone and had 3 50-inch flat panel TV screens up on the walls broadcasting in all their high-definition glory! ;-) The food was fantastic, the service was even better -- it was a great afternoon. :) I guess the 'surprise' in it all was that it happened on a Carter family vacation! Our stories, more often than not, tend to be about what goes wrong not what goes so right!! :)

Oh, and by the way, the Hellbender Salamander (where the grill gets its name from) is the largest salamander in the national park and has been known to grow up to 3 feet long!! :)

Here are a few other nice 'surprises' from the rest of the gang:

* Mackenzie - having such an adorable Zip-Line instructor (Joe) made that whole adventure even more fun for her! haha

* Anna - surviving an 11.5 mile hike to the top of Gregory Bald Mountain!

* Jack - passing (and getting to stop at) a parking lot full of beautiful muscle cars on the way in to Townsend. I think there were 4 '69 Camaros in that one lot! He was in heaven... ha.

* Kay - I was very happy that I was able to keep up with my daily bible reading all week - something that I tend to fall off on when I'm on vacation - and I really enjoyed it! :)
And the other neat surprise was seeing a mama bear and her two cubs in the woods at Cades Cove. That was really cool. (If you look closely, you'll see mama bear in the center and one of the cubs not far behind.) :)

Best Meal:

The meal plan for the week, thought of by my sister-in-law, Deb, was that each adult would be paired with one child and everyone would get their own night to cook a meal and to clean up. This would keep the 'moms' from being in the kitchen every night of the week and doing all the cooking! Good plan. :) So each adult/child pair planned and prepared their meals and it was a lot of fun (and good eating) to see what we had for dinner each night. We had shish-kabobs on Sun, Pizza night on Mon, Chicken Pot Pie on Tues, Stuffed Green Peppers and Mexican Rice on Wed, and a Potato Bar on Thurs -- YUM. Now, I have to be a little careful here about saying any one meal was the 'best' - don't want to hurt anyone's feelings! And to be fair, as I polled the family, everyone picked something different as their favorite. Here's how I decided my favorite - on Thurs. we had leftovers for lunch - and we had stuff left from EVERY meal. We referred to it as the "Pot-Pie Pepper Pizza-roni Kabob" lunch. :) Since the leftovers I went for were from the shish-kabob meal, I decided that was my favorite!

Best Hiking:

1) For our family, we ALL made it up to Chimney Tops and back - and got to enjoy some breathtaking views!





(I think this doubles as the best picture of the trip.)

2) All 10 of us got to hike the Middle Prong Trail and see some beautiful water falls and cascades.

3) Most strenuous hiking award goes to Jack, Anna and Carter for hiking the 11.5 mile Gregory Bald Trail - makes me tired just thinking about it. :)

4) Most ridiculous hike would be me, Louise, Deb, Taylor, Katie and Mackenzie ending up on a 6 mile hike (not our original plan!) to Abrams Falls with no water, no food, and no bandaids! (Louise fell and scraped her knee and we managed to wash it off in a stream and bum a bandaide off some nearby hikers!) But everyone we passed said the view of the waterfall was worth it, and it was beautiful!

Well that about wraps up the 'bests' of the week. We also had a list of 'most stupid things we packed' -- like Mackenzie bringing Wuthering Heights (her summer required reading) with her to read... she didn't touch it all week - haha. Also, the new swimsuit I ran out to buy the day before we left never made it out of the suitcase. :) I could go on... but it's taken me almost all day to get this done... time to stop. ;-)