Birding, Hiking & Photography

Since it is 70 degrees the week of Thanksgiving, we decided to sneak up to the Smoky Mountains.  Sneaking is a little more difficult now that we are 2.5 hours away.  The major question was if Kae-Kae would be able to handle it.  She is in the middle of a med change which is always a tough time for her, and she has not been doing well with being gone for long periods of time. 

Well... for the first time in 7 months, we had a FAMILY FUN DAY!!!

We left at 7:30 and made it to the Reagan's House of Pancakes for breakfast, where they have an all-you-can-eat buffet.  Of course, we could only afford the $1 menu for lunch after all those pancakes. 

Our goal was to bird, hike and take pictures.

Well, I can tell you we counted 17 pancake houses on the Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg strip, but we only saw 6 birds.  Maybe we can justify that by telling we did not begin hiking until noon?

So, we are still one camera short, since there is one wrapped under our tree for a certain 7 year old, so I had to take pics with my Tracfone. 

Then we were surprised by our friend Jim Eastin (photography teacher) who had passes up the tram to Ober and wristbands for us to ride the rides.  So, we had a real vacation with all FOUR of our children and we got to see Jim (on the defunked blog, I had written a review of his photo class that he offers in the area).

So you can see Kae-Kae is a little intimidated about careening up a mountain that is 2500 ft up.  Every time it hit a bump, she was a little jumpy, but she DID it!!

 Here is a pic I took from the tram.  It was a beautiful day.  It was so wonderful for the Lord to give us such a great present. 

Heather