Tennessee Trip

Since I can’t blog in real time, I’ll post one huge blog about the whole trip all at once.

DAY 1:
The trip itself was pretty uneventful. It all went smooth until we got around Knoxville to Sevierville. That town sucks. The traffic was so freaking slow. We went about 1 mile an hour through the whole town. Before we knew it, we were in Pigeon Forge driving at about the same speed. Rounded the bend to Gatlinburg and the GPS system went mountain crazy on me. I need to note here that mom had a gps system in the van ahead of me, and mine said something completely different. Since we were nowhere close to each other, she went a different route (the way her gps told her to) and we started up the mountain only to find out we were supposed to turn right somewhere where there was no road. Of course the locals behind me were getting quite pissed. It was obvious I was from Indiana hence the Indiana license plate…”give me a break moron”. So I kept going until I found a place to turn around. Little did I know, it wasn’t a place I was supposed to turn around (well it was, but I went past the turnaround and turned into the exit). Whatever. Again….not from here, give me a break. He did. He honked his horn just incase it was unclear that I was clueless. So we get turned around, called my mom to find out she was in downtown Gatlinburg. Now my gps was taking me to downtown Gatlinburg, so that was cool. I called her when we got down there because the traffic was similarly slow and I wanted an idea of how long it would be til we got through, and asked if she was still downtown. She said “oh no…I’m going up, WAY UP!! So we finally decided to pass the suburban in front of us who we figured out was slowing down the whole crowd (I think he was driving along side someone who was walking just to keep them company). Once we got around him, the real fun began. Up a mountain down a mountain, up a mountain, down a mountain. Go around this curve. Where’s our turn??? Oh, there it was. Ok, where can we turn around? Ummmmmm…there’s no place to turn around. There’s a street, but it’s not big enough to turn around on. Oh, there’s a place. Ok, turn around….now, how far have we gone since were supposed to turn? Oh, there it is. Oh my god. That’s a street? It looks like a freaking 70 degree climb. Holy crap! I hope nobody’s coming down this hill, cuz I’m coming up and there’s only room for one of us. So we do this like 10 times, pass the road we were supposed to turn on, get ourselves turned around, etc. So finally, I pull off at some other rental just to be a smart aleck, tell my mom we’re lost and we’ll be a while, but if they could have the van unloaded and dinner started by the time we figure out where the hell we are, that’d be great…only to find out she’s lost somewhere else on the mountain. She says she is stopped somewhere near the top, can’t figure out where she’s supposed to go, but decided to stop and let the van cool down for a little bit before she tries to figure it out. The gps systems are just sitting there thinking “this wasn’t what I was paid to do” so they just kinda gave up on us. We start driving again and finally get close to the road we’re supposed to be on, and then realize it’s like a 150 degree left turn…there’s no way to do it. So we go down a ways to find a turnaround (again) and head back to the straight climb up to the top of the mountain where our cabin is. Once I get there, I find my mother has already found it. She’s awaiting our arrival, and seems very excited that we, too, survived the trek!

So, we get everything inside finally, start pulling our crap out of the bags, and start to notice that there are mouse droppings (only much bigger…what the hell it really is, I’m not sure yet…perhaps that will come later), all over the house. Mostly in the sinks and stuff, but definitely a lot. Again, to this moment (9:00 p.m. Saturday night) we haven’t seen any physical signs of anything….but it’s scary nonetheless.

So Jennie and I decided since the ober tram was only supposed to be 0.9 miles away, we’d take a walk to see how far it is, and if we can just walk there and avoid having to get back into the cars until we are ready to leave. We’re both physically fit. We work out at the gym together. Surely we can walk 0.9 miles. Lol. (go back to the part where I said we’re on the top of the mountain). So we get about 0.1 miles away (if that far) and we’ve already walked straight down the whole time!!!! So we decide it isn’t happening and start walking back. We get back about 10 minutes later…and decide to drive to ober to see how far it is and whether we were weanies and could actually make it with the kids. Down the mountain, up another one, down the mountain, and up a huge one….and we’re finally there. So we have our answer. Not no, but hell no. It’s only actually 0.8 miles. But it’s still a hell no.

So we get up to the ober tram, and Jennie freaks out. She’s afraid of heights, my mom is scared to death of heights…she’s saying at this point, there’s no way we’re gonna get her on that. If that’s true, there’s no way we’re getting my mom on it either. The only problem is, if we don’t take that down…that means we gotta drive down, which of course also means….we have to drive back up again. I’m not interested in that!

So we’re back home, planning out what we might and might not do tomorrow. Strategizing what we’re gonna use to hit these big whatever the hell they are dropping these cat-like feces….and just plain worn out and ready for bed.

I’ll let you know how tomorrow goes when we get back from our day full of events.

DAY 2:
Day 2 started way too early. Besides not being able to go to sleep due to the pitter patter of the little rodents going through something we apparently left out in the kitchen, trying to figure out what makes all those little sounds that go bump in the night and set off the motion activated light right outside my bedroom door, having to kill a spider that I saw crawling up the window shades (yes, I killed it myself) and just generally not being comfortable in a place that makes me nervous…the thunderstorm hit around 2:30 or so and woke us all up. Actually, the thundering and lightning bothered me. It wasn’t until the others woke up when I found out that apparently, when you are sleeping in one of the upstairs bedrooms, the “metal roof” that is supposed to be awesome on rainy nights, isn’t so awesome when the wind hits and it sounds like the roof is going to be blown off if another gust of wind comes through. (Upon learning of this story, I quickly offered to switch rooms with anyone…unfortunately, they would rather deal with the possibility of the roof flying off than the pitter patter outside the kitchen! I woke up again around 5, and then was up for the day around 7:30. It sucked because the storm was still overhead, we could sit on the porch and watch the rain come down….but there was no way we were going to go anywhere to do anything, because my happy ass is scared enough driving down the mountain when it’s dry! I’m not about to drive down it in the pouring rain where my brakes would most assuredly test me when sliding on some rocks at the bottom of the road and sending us to the bottom of the mountain on a much quicker and more painful route. I’m sure it most likely wouldn’t happen that way, but it’s my fear, and I’ve shown on this trip that I am conquering my fears. But I’ll continue to do so on dry land.

While we are on the subject of conquering fears however, once the rain stopped, and the roads started to dry up, we hit the road for a little adventure. We all went up to ober and took the tram downtown. My mother is more scared of heights than anyone I know. Jennie claims to be pretty scared of heights, and we got my mom on the tram by telling her that her and Jennie are facing their fears together, but it’s quite obvious my mom is much more scared than she is. So we get on the tram and mom did really well. I got a lot of good pictures, and even a video. (There’s a house up here in the mountains that was built to be a replica of the Barbie dream house…I got it on the video today not even knowing it, but I’ll make sure I take an actual picture of it next time we go down now that I know what it is). We weren’t sure if we could take the strollers on the tram, so we left them behind and headed downtown. I would eventually regret that decision. We got almost all the way down the mountain when it started pouring. I know that I exaggerate sometimes, but this time, when I say pouring, I’m not really just meaning it started raining. I mean a torrential down-pour. So we hang out at the downtown ober terminal waiting for it to clear up a bit. When it did, we hit the streets. We walked for a little bit, and then it started pouring again so we stopped at a little drug store to wait it out. While there, I got a screwdriver for our little home project that I forgot to mention. Prior to leaving, Nate locked one of the bathroom doors (we have 3). And then shut the door. Odd? Not really. Only he wasn’t in there. So we have to find a skeleton key of some sort. Nowhere in the house was a skeleton key. So we’re trying all sorts of stuff. Hangers, incense sticks, whatever we can fit in there….no luck. Call the property manager, can’t get through. Call the owner, she’s clueless. She calls her husband, he calls me back, gives me a couple more ideas, and so we try them. No luck. So finally we decide I need to take off another door handle so I can see how it works, and then I can figure out what to do to get that one open. Only I don’t have any tools at all. So now back to downtown. Stops raining again, so we start walking. We’re just taking it all in trying to figure out where we are gonna go first. Most of us are hungry, so we decide we’re gonna start looking for food. It starts pouring again, so we go into the first place we see, which just happens to be burger king. It stopped while we were in there, so we decided we needed to make a plan, so we did. We decided today would be aquarium day. Burger King was at about light 8 (ober, where we started, was at light 9) so we had to go down to between lights 5 and 6 to get to the aquarium. The lights are a heck of a lot further apart than I thought, and it made it much further having to carry Alex because home boy was either too incredibly slow, or simply did not feel like walking. So we get there, and it was absolutely awesome. I had to carry Alex all the way through it because he was a little scared with all the people, the sounds, all the big stuff. But I’d carried him the whole way just about, what’s another hour or so? We saw a lot of stuff, took a decent amount of pictures, and went down to the tube that goes right through the middle of the aquarium. It seemed like a long tube, but we found that they actually have a moving floor that you step on and it takes you all the way through the tube. The kids were all pretty amazed going through the middle of an aquarium. You’d see a shark come at you, then go over your head. Looking up, it was as if they really were just over your head. It felt like you could reach up and touch it. A stingray came up to us, and went over us, and Alex ducked (as if that would save him or something). But it was really cool. I know I didn’t write as much about it as I did the crappy stuff, but there isn’t much to say, other than I think we may wish we’d have saved it for last, because I have a feeling it may be the highlight of the trip. So we got smart and went to the visitor center to figure out the trolley system. We didn’t want to walk all the way back down there (I certainly didn’t because I knew I’d have to carry Alex). So we took the trolley back to ober, hit the snack shop for an ice cream treat, and then took the tram back up to our getaway cars. We didn’t spend much time down there, but it was nice while it lasted. We went back to our rental, and decided to cook out on the grill. We had hotdogs, hamburgers, and corn on the cob. I’m quite sure a bear will come try to knock over the grill to get to the aluminum foil that assuredly reeks of hamburger grease, but it was a great dinner nonetheless. I drew a bath for Alex in the Jacuzzi. We didn’t turn on the bubbles, but it was quite obvious he was incredibly excited to have a bath. Sat back and watched some television and just relaxed. Before we knew it, Army Wives was on, bed time drawing near, and another day down in the books.

So tomorrow I am told is supposed to consist of thunderstorms. As of right now, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are supposed to be nice, so perhaps we will spend tomorrow figuring out what we want to do on those days. I think we figured out where one of the three pools are that we have access to. We will go swimming one of those three days but haven’t figure out which one yet. My immediate goal is to get myself to sleep while the air Is kicked on before I can hear the pitter patter. My chances of sleeping peacefully depend on my ability to block that out while falling, and of course, once the air kicks off and all is quite on the mountain front, there is just no blocking it out! So more tomorrow. Hopefully it doesn’t pour all day and it won’t suck completely.

DAY 3:
This post is being written on Day 4. Sorry. Day 3 sucked big time. We took the kids downtown again on the tram. I acquired a headache pretty early on and the rest of the day seemed to go straight down hill for me. I’ve been having headaches for a long time. Over the last few months, I’ve started getting nauseous with them but never really bad. This one got progressively worse, to the point where I truly felt there were only two things that could make me feel better…vomiting, or putting a bullet in my head. We talked about it, and figured out it was a combination of several things. The elevation, not eating breakfast, the heat, the kids screaming, not sleeping well…just all around not good things combined making for a really bad day. I felt like I was going to pass out most of the time and frequently had to stop and sit down, but closing my eyes made me really feel like I was going to blow. We were out probably 5 hours or so and I had finally had enough. I had to come back home because I couldn’t make it any longer. I actually tried to hide it for the most part, pretending to be ok, pretending only to stay behind because Alex was asleep and not because I couldn’t walk any further…but the kids seemed to still have a pretty good time. When we got back to the house, I tried to lay up in my mom’s room away from civilization but still couldn’t get comfortable. Came back downstairs, took 3 aleve, crawled up in my bed, and when it finally started to subside, I was down for the count. I woke up at midnight and freaked out thinking “holy crap…where is everyone”. I really wasn’t tired so I didn’t plan to sleep. It just happened. So I went back to sleep realizing everyone else was there, and got up with everyone else in the morning to start day 4.

DAY 4:
Today was an exciting day. No headache. No problems. We decided to drive down the mountain this time so we could fill up our gas tanks. Went to Pigeon Forge without really having a plan. We went through a bunch of brochures here at the cabin and found really one place that we thought would be interesting (3 bears general store) and decided we’d take the kids there. So we did. Only to find out it wasn’t open yet. Don’t know if it was just being remodeled or what, but we found it, parked, and then realized the sign said “opening soon”. So we walked around for a bit and couldn’t find anything else to do. Then we remembered WonderWorks. It was the big upside down motel that was supposed to be full of adventures, but we had seen a youtube video that didn’t look all that interesting. So we decided to go ahead and give it a shot. Boy were we glad. We LOVED it, and they talked us into getting the dinner show combo at Hoot & Holler with it (making the total bill $217). The kids and adults loved everything at WonderWorks, and when it was time for dinner, we had an absolute blast. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed that hard in my life. Poor Alex was tired as hell from all the fun at WonderWorks, so he crawled up in the booth and went to sleep after having a little bit of salad, prior to the main course, and of course missed most of the show. He woke up for desert but we had enough dinner left over that he would eat some later. So the show ended and we went back to the grocery store (where my car was parked) for a few more items to get us through the week. I sent my mom on back to the cabin as we didn’t plan on being there too long, and after we picked up some salad dressing, snacks, and of course more beer, we were off to the cabin. We took the bypass hoping to avoid the downtown Gatlinburg traffic and ended up getting lost and going up the wrong mountain, but we only drove about 5 minutes out of the way before figuring it out, so I would consider that an accomplishment. While lost, we found the 3rd of the 3 pools we have access to up here, not that we have actually been to the 1st or 2nd….but we know where they all are now if we should decide we want to swim. Tomorrow is sure to be just as action packed as today was since it isn’t supposed to rain tomorrow either, but the kids (and us) are all tuckered out and ready to get some shut eye. So more info tomorrow!

DAY 5:
Today was another good day. Started out the day with three aleve hoping to alleviate any headache that might come along. We all jumped in the van (1 person too many, which left me sitting on imagination which was fine for all the further we were traveling). I have this thing though about being a passenger while riding up or down the mountain. I can drive it and be scared shitless, but the fact that I’m in control of my own destiny gives me a little bit of a comfort. Knowing that I may go plummeting to my death at the hands of someone else at the wheel is perhaps a much bigger fear of mine. But this trip is all about overcoming fears, right? Anyway, we went back up to ober, caught the tram to downtown where I videotaped the entire tram ride this time. Went shopping pretty much, wanted to hit some of the shops we had seen in the days prior but didn’t want to stop so as to avoid boring the kids to death. We got a lot of cool souvenir type stuff for ourselves, but I always dread picking out souvenir stuff for friends. I know they expect nothing and would not be offended if that is exactly what I brought back, but I still toss and turn over whether a shot glass is okay, or a keychain is too cheesy, or whatever. So I didn’t end up finding any “take home souvenirs” yet, but I still have a few days. Jennie finally found her purse and a purse for her friend that asked her to get one while here, so the shopping trip wasn’t a complete wash. We had lunch at Quizzno’s, hit a few more shops on the way back up the hill, then hit the tram again for the ride back up. (We did get some awesome fudge…3.5 pounds of it actually, but I don’t expect to be bringing any of that back home as I’ll probably sit up and eat a pound tonight). So then we took the kids down to one of the clubhouse pools (we have access to 3 of them). No more did we get there, get our clothes off, get sunscreened up, and some kid apparently decided he didn’t want to go to the bathroom, so he simply took a dump in the pool. Immediately, the person overseeing the pool area closed it down and told everyone they would reopen in about an hour. We didn’t know (at that point), what had happened. When she first announced “everyone out of the pool”, I assumed it was one of those 15 minute break type things where the staff could go get something to eat, or whatever. Once we overheard them directing everyone to another pool, we began questioning the shutdown, at which time we decided whether they were able to successfully clean it out in an hour or not, we would voluntarily go elsewhere. Not sure exactly what the process is of cleaning feces from a pool, but I didn’t really care because the thought was enough to direct me elsewhere. So the kids didn’t understand (especially Alex being so little and excited to get into the big bathtub as he considers it), but we got them dressed and went to the upper alpine clubhouse which I actually think is closer to our cabin anyway. We got there, were ensured that nobody had crapped in their pool, and began the preparation process of actually swimming for real this time. Alex refused to get in his little flotation device because he was quite certain if he didn’t have his arms and legs wrapped around me, he would sink straight to the bottom, so I set it aside and we hung out in the kiddie section first, and made our way to the big kids pool never crossing the rope leaving the 4 foot section. Everyone seemed to have a really good time, but we had to cut the trip short as Alex’s poor face was turning bright red and I was quite certain he was going to have an incredible sunburn to deal with in the morning. We got back to the cabin and had dinner (eggs, bacon, biscuits and gravy) and retired to the hot tub for some relaxation and miller light. Well, we didn’t let the kids drink any, but Jennie and I had a couple and since the boys had actually gotten their swimming time in, they were more susceptible to simply enjoying the 104 degree hot tub rather than trying to swim in it.

I read another couple chapters of my book and relaxed with the television on before Alex crawled up in my lap ready to call it a night, and now I’m here with him in the bed beside me writing my day 5 portion of the blog before retiring myself. Oh….I almost forgot. My mother brought her camcorder which records about 2 hours of footage, so we decided we were going to set some food out Friday night and let it run for a couple hours so that we can see exactly what animal hangs out in our kitchen each night. Based on the size of the feces (and I’m quite sure I’ve already relayed this in an earlier portion) we have a hard time believing that it is simply mice, or even rats. So we’ll record it for a couple hours, and then watch on Saturday on the way home to find out the actual culprit. Obviously we could do this any night, but perhaps it is safest for us and will allow us to continue to get decent sleep NOT knowing until after we have left. So Friday night it is. (Oh…some of the ramblings of Alex are starting to sound like real words now. There were a couple times today that he would say something, I thought I knew what he said so I’d repeat it, and he would look at me with the most excitement in the world and nod his head saying yes…so enthusiastic about the fact that I understood him. I think he’s starting to figure out that I am much too old to learn his language, so he’s giving mine a shot! The more he figures out he’ll get what he wants if he asks for it by name, the more he’s gonna do it….so it’s a start!)

DAY 6:
Today was the ultimate eventful day. After waking up at 2:30 in the morning to some sort of rat race, or other type of event they had, unfortunately it took quite a while to get back to sleep. I may have explained this in an earlier post, but rather than going back and reading the first 6 pages to determine if I had, I’ll simply explain again. When the air kicks on, all is sound on the western front. The air is loud enough that I can hear nothing. Fortunately, that is the time to fall asleep. If the air kicks off and the house is silent, the things that go bump in the night come to life. I awoke at 2:30 to the sound of somethingS in the ceiling running back and forth, sliding into walls, making a horrible ruckus. I kept my eyes on the clock hoping like hell the air would kick on once again and I could fall asleep and ignore the obvious sounds above me. So at about 3:15, the air finally kicked on. I rolled over, got myself comfortable, and the air kicked back off again. The air up here was apparently cool enough that the central air had a smaller job to do maintaining the temperature, and I was left to lie awake and listen to the race for yet another half an hour or so. When I finally made it back to sleep, I awoke around 8:30 feeling not so refreshed, but awake and ready to hit the day. Much to my surprise, nobody else in the house heard the race, so I once again agonized over the fact that I was chosen for the downstairs room to allow me some seclusion for my vacation (I’d rather have slept in a twin bed with all 3 of my damn kids but the beds upstairs were bigger, so I stayed by my own choosing). We had a nice breakfast and then charted out our day. We decided we wanted to hit 3 places today…a magic show, a cavern, and mel’s diner. Called the magic show place and found out they had 2 shows, one at 3 and one at 8. We decided on the 3:00 show as nobody ever wants to drive up the mountain in the dark, hell, I’m not sure I like driving it in the daytime. It was close to noon when we all got ready, so we decided we’d hit Mel’s Diner for lunch, and then hit the magic show (Magic Beyond Belief) and then hit the cavern. We got out of the show shortly after 5, and figured out that the cavern closed at 6 and was in Sevierville so if we could make it, we would not have much time to enjoy the beauty. So we called it a day. Jennie and I had some things we wanted to pick up in town, so we all headed back to our cabin, and mom volunteered to watch the kids while her and I took the tram down to town to pick them up. We desperately needed sugar if I was to have coffee in the morning (and they don’t want to be around me if I don’t have coffee in the morning), and she needed some cough medicine for Ariah as she is started to get sick, and she is miserable when she is sick. So we went down on our own, walked around a little bit to find some last minute souvenirs for the people back home, and headed back up. When arriving back at the cabin, I really just wanted to snuggle up on the couch and watch a little bit of television while everyone else was eating dinner. They all sat down to eat, and I glanced out the window to see a bear outside walking up to our cars. I yelled at them so that they could all get up to see it, and we were all amazed that he walked right up to our cabin and was searching around for food. I’m not experienced with bears, but I could tell it obviously wasn’t a big one. We determined it was a baby bear, and malnourished at that, desperately searching for something to eat. I snapped a couple shots from my camera trying to keep the kids back, but the glare from the window and my flash made it nearly impossible to capture a good shot. So with the littlest ones in the hands of an adult, I opened the door and attempted to get a couple better shots. IT didn’t work out all that well because it was venturing to the other side of the house, but looking at the pictures, a couple of them show that it was certainly a bear for the viewing pleasure of the people back home once I get all the pictures posted on the computer. We all know for sure it was, and as much as we are glad to have had the experience of a bear actually walking up to our cabin, it makes for a terrible smoking experience as we are not incredibly guarded. Jennie on one end of the porch while I’m on the other keeping a watchful eye out for our newfound friend. It is a good thing we are leaving on Saturday, as I’m not sure how comfortable I would have been had we seen the bear say Monday! The porch has come to be our comfortable spot, usually away from the majority of the kids, where we can either plan our day, or discuss our day, while relaxing on the rocking chairs and enjoying the solitude the mountain has to offer. It was originally in our plans to be in the hot tub this evening, and a frightening thought knowing that 24 hours earlier, we were in the hot tub, with all the kids, and the bear could have just as easily come a day earlier and by this time, would not have looked as malnourished. My children are not knowledgeable of bears never having seen any roaming around the streets of Marion, and do not know to play dead. We, on the other hand, know to do so, but unfortunately would not be able to, as we are a couple of chicken shit women who literally scream when we see spiders and freak out until we manage to find someone brave enough to kill them for us. I’ve heard stories of bears being up here, but considering the fact we couldn’t even walk a tenth of a mile down the mountain, I was confident we wouldn’t be seeing any because there’s no way they could make it up and down this road!

So now it’s off to bed for another night. We decided to go ahead and record the noises that go bump in the night tonight, so that we don’t have to worry about it tomorrow, on our last night here. My mother advised that although her video camera battery keeps its charge for up to 3 hours, the discs only hold half an hour. Once we hit record though, I’m hitting the bed and not intending to go out an switch the tapes. So hopefully we get what we don’t want to see in the first half hour! I still can’t wait to find out what it is…ok, I can, until we leave, but I’m going to make Jennie watch it on the way home so I can see as soon as we are out of here.

DAY 7:
The last real day of fun! Forecast called for a 40% chance of rain. We didn’t get any thankfully. We’d have been stuck up here all day. My mom and I won’t drive down the mountain wet, and Jennie won’t drive down the mountain at all. Set up the video camera last night hoping to catch a glimpse of what has been keeping me up at night. Got up this morning, and the camera apparently didn’t work. So we’ll try again tonight, with two cameras instead, and maybe we’ll get some info on the drive home. So we took our time getting up and out this morning. Had to share two pots of coffee between the 3 of us. We decided we’d head to Sevierville to check out the forbidden caverns. Thankfully we all wore tennis shoes because it was an hour walk through the caverns. We reached a depth of 200 feet below the ground. We managed to get a lot of really good pictures there as well. It was a nice place. It sucked having to carry Alex all the way through it, but we found out there is some sort of Tennessee law prohibiting anyone from touching the rocks and stuff under there, because the oil from our skin will ruin t he growth, blah blah blah, don’t let us go down there then! Duh. Sounds uncomplicated to me. Make a video of it, and post it on youtube so we can all see. It works for everything else! Anyway, we decided to head back to Gatlinburg and have one more nice dinner out. We went to Texas Road House down at the bottom of ski mountain, and then headed back up for the cleaning, packing, loading job. Jennie decided she wanted to have one last go around with the hot tub. After last night’s bear sighting outside of our place, I decided I had no interest in getting in the hot tub. She fretted over it for a while, not knowing whether it was a good or bad idea, and then finally came around to the idea when I agreed to take “bear watch duty”. I sat at one end of the porch and watched up the mountain, my mother sat at the other end of the porch watching the other direction, and Jennie and the kids sat in the hot tub watching up the mountain behind the cabin. I explained the phrase that pays….if they heard me say “GET OUT NOW”, they knew a spotting had been made, and I would do my best to throw the hot dogs at them somewhat downward on the road in an effort to give them more time….but I explained that there would be no trial runs…if I say the words GET OUT NOW, they were obviously to do just that! Didn’t see any bears. They didn’t stay long….not so relaxing sitting in a nice hot tub at the end of the day if you’re on the edge of your seat the whole time. So we’ll have to go back home and have a hot tub installed in one of our back yards where we don’t have to worry about bears. Not much else going on now. We’re packing up the rest of our stuff, washing up that which is dirty, getting our clothes out and ready for morning, loading what we can, getting the video equipment set up for tonight’s attempted recording, and hitting the sack for one last night. I hate to say that I’ll be glad as hell when I get to sleep in my own bed again. It’s time to start thinking about what beach we want to go to next year. Can’t go to Florida. The Disney World trip is still in the plans for 2013. But maybe myrtle beach, or if I’m not able to put back enough, then maybe Indiana Beach. Hopefully not!

DAY 8: Pack em up and move em out! Drive time. No blog today!