House of Kerrs: Great Smoky Mountain Vacation

First stop on our vacation was to see Marissa and Casey's new house in Festus.

Their house backs to a park that we loved exploring.

Very cool cave/bridge

First adventure was going to a Kerr family favorite (and first time for the Prewitts): Elephant Rocks!

We also took them to Johnson Shut-ins, but no pictures were taken. The next day we headed out on our own....right back to Elephant Rocks.

We ran into a slight problem on our planned route.

Swimming before camping for the night.

We randomly decided to check out Mammoth Cave the next day. Apparently you can't roll up to a National Park on at 9:00am on a random Tuesday and expect to get a cave tour. Everything was sold out. You can still tour the main entry room though, so that's what we did.

Breakfast fun at the hotel

We made it to the Great Smokies!

Clingmans Dome: the highest point on the Appalachian Trail and in Tennessee. You are supposed to be able to see 7 states, but it was a cloudy day.

Camping in Great Smoky National Park. We found it was crowded (most visited National Park) and rainy. Our stuff got soaked.

We did time our trip perfectly for these rhododendron blooms. They were everywhere on our hikes!

We had to move campsites during the our stay, which is very upsetting. But we ended up with this as our "back yard" behind our new campsite.

We got rained out of a ranger program about the Elkmont ghost town. We did get to walk around Cades Cove old settlement before it started sprinkling again.

Then we drove to Atlanta. We rented out an RV (parked it someone's driveway) for the next leg of our trip. We were pretty excited to stay in it!

Our main reason to go to Atlanta was the zoo.

And the main thing to see at the zoo was pandas.

Someone loves pandas.

We watched this guy for a long time. We'd never seen a snake out in thin air so far supporting myself just by the body that was still on the wall.

lizard love

naked mole rats

We read The One and Only Ivan and knew he ended up at Zoo Atlanta, but unfortunately we were a few years too late to see Ivan in person.

Like the panda habitat, the gorilla habitat was pretty amazing.

The other cool thing about Zoo Atlanta was the ropes course. We had to pay extra for it, but it was still really cool. It was neat to watch Olive go from really nervous to conquering the course and doing her first zip line!

Overall the zoo was pretty small. It's major attractions were the pandas and gorillas. But that's why we were there since they are only three zoos in the United States with pandas. After the zoo we saw some other sites in Atlanta like the capitol building.

We ate at the largest drive-in the world: The Varsity. It covers 2 city blocks.

The other main attraction in Atlanta: Georgia Aquarium. I don't know what exactly I was expecting, but it exceed all expectations. It was almost like a mini Disney World.

During one of the presentations we were we watching we got to see a proposal!

Taking in a 3D movie

On to the next town! Steve really wanted to walk on one of the longest pedestrian bridges: Walnut Street Bridge in Chattanooga.

We were too late to visit the art museum, but we did look at the sculpture garden outside of it.

There is a similar piece at our KC Zoo!

We drove up to the top of Lookout Mountain. We were a little late and the sun had already set.

I remembered being here as a kid, but I didn't remember it until I saw it.

Next stop: Nashville

Spirits were low and we needed something more kid-friendly than listening to country music.

We had a couple of hours before the Adventure Science Center closed and we had a free pass since we are Union Station members. Score!

Coolest exhibit was a simulated moon walk with less gravity.

Adults can do it too! (pictures by Hannah)

They also had virtual reality experience, plus a body protection shoot out!

Wickliffe Mounds in Kentucky

We ended our trip camping at Round Spring and canoeing on the Current River. Steve signed us up for 20 miles. After we made it past the halfway point and committed to the whole thing it started raining. It was coming down so hard it was difficult to see with all the splash up off the river. And it was cold! At one point we were in an cave on the river just trying to wait out the downpour. When we finally made it out there were park rangers making sure people made it off the river okay. We drove to a Mexican restaurant just to get out of the rain and get some hot food before going back to our campsite that night. Guess what? It rained just about all night. Our tent did okay. The people next to us did not have as good of luck and ended up sleeping in their car and fighting off a raccoon trying to get into their cooler! It was a very memorable camping and canoeing experience.