Travel Update 17

After coming back from the Dominican Republic, we spent a few more days in Atlanta with Andreas's family. The only other thing on our Atlanta to do list was a brief visit to the CDC museum. It was an interesting history of the CDC and a great exposure to the concept of public health. It was again further confirmation of what we learned in DC, museums are slightly less interesting when you already have a degree or two in their subject area. But we always enjoy seeing how different groups present the information.

We were all poised to leave on Saturday, but our faucet started leaking. We were worried something may have broken during the sub freezing temperatures Atlanta had while we were in the DR. However, when we disassembled it, it seemed like a o-ring somehow got out of place. Putting it back together made it stop leaking. The whole thing took just long enough for us to decide to wait until Sunday to head out.

On Sunday, we stopped at a disc golf and dog park along the way. The off-leash area was tiny, but we got a good walk in with Aiden, who hadn't been getting much exercise. It seemed like a nice park, but inexplicable there were no dogs allowed on any of the trails outside of the disc golf course.

 

In the evening, we found a a place in Hayesville, NC to watch the second leg of the women's basketball Civil War. We knew we were in the right place because they had an Oregon Ducks flag hanging! One of the owners even threw an O while we were trying to sneak a picture of it.

It turned out to be a very emotional game because of the tragic and sudden death of NBA great Kobe Bryant, who had been to several duck games, met with the team and even built a friendship with Oregon's star player, Sabrina. The Ducks were able to play through the heartbreak, pulling away in the fourth quarter.

We spent that night at a lovely campground in lovely, remote forest.

 

The next couple days we spent working hard on getting this blog up to date. We told ourselves that we would not go into Great Smokey Mountains until that was done. So, we spent a few days in Robinsville, NC near Lake Santeetlah, which had some free camping sites along the lake. It was absolutely gorgeous there in the mountain town.

 

On one of the days, we went to the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest on recommendation from a very friendly librarian in Robinsville. We enjoyed the short, 2 mile, figure-8 hike through the forest before returning to our work.

 

After getting all of our overdue blog posts written, we finally went on to our next national park. Right outside the park, on the Tennessee side, are the towns of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. Both of these towns are incredibly touristy. The latter made us think of a family friendly Las Vegas with tons of arcade like activities, fair style rides, and hotels galore. We took a short video driving through Gatlinburg:



We stayed at the Cracker Barrel in Pigeon Forge and even ate there one night thanks to a gift card we got for Christmas from Hubert and Emily, Andreas's brother and sister-in-law.

This past week has been a lot of fun. It's good to be on the road again without holidays or international trips just around the corner. We do wish it were a little bit warmer though. Looking forward to the southwest.