Smokey Mountain Retreat

Thanksgiving evening we traveled down to Kentucky to spend the night before traveling on to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. We wanted to stop for coffee on the way and stopped at least three times trying to find a shop that was open. We did find one but they were closing in a few minutes. We got our coffee and ordered a donut but to our surprise they gave us six boxes of donuts FREE as they wanted to get rid of them before closing!!! Buddy had a big smile on his face and knew this was a great day.

The next day was a sunny travel day down to the Smokey Mountains. We stayed in a gorgeous log cabin in the mountains. It was at the top of the mountains with a beautiful view of the surrounding mountain. We went to Country Tonight variety show that evening in Pigeon Forge. There are several different shows that you can see each night. The next day we spent in Dollywood going to different music shows including one with the Kingdom Heirs, an Appalachian Christmas show, and Smokey Mountain Christmas. We really enjoyed them. We even rode two awesome roller coasters. We stayed until dark just to see all of their Christmas lights. There were thousands and thousands of lights... That night, we went to see "The Miracle" which is about the life of Christ. The next day we went to the Cowboy Church for Sunday services and in the afternoon went to the Ripley's Aquarium. The aquarium had a lot of cool fish and other creatures like cuttlefish, leafy sea dragons, stingrays, etc. We really enjoyed it. We got to touch a horseshoe crab there.
The next day we went to a dinner show that featured the Smith Family. We enjoyed their singing. The weather was quite nice the entire time but it did start raining on Sunday evening and it turned cooler. We traveled back to Kentucky today and the weather is nice and sunny. We really enjoyed our time in Tennessee.