The day started out innocent enough…breakfast with Riley and Taylor at Gigi and Poppa’s table. But, it quickly turned in to a whirlwind adventure. As the Lafayette Lawsons were planning to head out to take in all of the Ripley’s attractions, the Lebanon Lawsons were bent on getting to Ober Gatlinburg and doing it to the top!
We got dressed in all of our layers and piled in the car bound for Gatlinburg. After searching all over for a parking spot, we finally landed a pretty good one close to the tram up the mountain. As soon as we walked in, we hit the first of what would, unfortunately, become a big theme of the day…a line. We spent the next hour and a half just waiting to buy a ticket to ride the lift up the mountain. And, Mommy didn’t even want to ride in the big basket hanging from those little wires high, high above the tree tops (she loves to hear it described that way)! With tickets finally in hand, we moved over to…the tram line. Ugg…another 30-45 minutes there before we were final on our way along the Z-axis.
At the top, we absorbed all of the different fun things to do in the lodge & park over lunch and decided that ice skating would be our next excursion while we waited for the afternoon ski session. We laced up just in time for the Zamboni to take to the ice, which caused a bit of a delay, but we had fun saying Zamboni while we waited for it to clear the ice. When we had the green light, we all hit the ice like we knew what the heck we were doing. We switched on and off…Momma with me, Daddy with Morgan, then Daddy with me and Momma with Morgan. I pretty much stuck to the outside and the rail except for when Daddy took me out to the middle of the ice and let me play around for a bit. Una, however, got the hang of things really fast and was zipping around on the ice like a pro! I think she gets her natural talent from Momma, who also looked super talented on her skates.
After about an hour and a half of ice skating, our feet were pretty sore and the Zamboni (he he!) was heading back out, so we dropped off the skates and made our way to the ski lodge.
Line. A big one. We probably spent an hour and a half working our way through the line to buy the lift tickets and pay for equipment. But, once we had it, we jumped to the next stage.
Line. Bigger one. Next 2 hours…chalk that up to boots and skis. Holy smokes, I just want to shred, people! But, so did everyone. This was the first big snow they had up there in a long time, apparently, so there were A LOT of people excited to get on the slopes.
Anyway, now we had boots on, carrying skis, coats on and bundled. All primed and ready for our Ski School lessons! They split us up and Una and I went with the kiddie instructor while Momma and Daddy went with the adult class. Not sure what they did over there, but I occupied myself by eating snow and having the instructor carry me up the practice hill. I got the hang of it though and could point my skis to make french fries (parallel) or pizza (wedge). Morgan was rocking it and followed all of the instructions well, too…she was a start student.
Now that we were all trained, we hit the Bunny Hills to put ourselves to the test. It is way harder than it looks, for sure, but I think everyone was pretty darn proud of themselves and each other. Mommy and I went down a few times together and Daddy and Morgan were zipping around all the way to the bottom. I liked going back up on the tow rope a lot because Daddy would prop his legs behind me and push me all the way back up the hill as he held on to the handle. Pretty soon, Momma wore out and ditched her skis to just follow my little skis while Morgan and Daddy kept showing off. They even went up the big, big ski lift to the Green slope and had a try down one of the big hills! They said it was very big, fast, and scary, but they made it all the way down without injury, so they conquered it as far as I’m concerned. Finally, Daddy and Morgan wrapped up with a few more trips down the Bunny Hill while Mommy and I returned our equipment and…got in line. When Morgan and Daddy met up with us, we had already been there 40 minutes, and we had about another hour to go before we were all back on the tram and down the mountain. But, everyone was in really high spirits as we talked about our adventure. We compared bruises and soreness as we munched on fudge and snacks back to the hotel for some much deserved rest.
