A Tennessee getaway

Our friends Jon & Karen invited us to go on a weekend getaway with them to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, so on Thursday my parents-in-law arrived to take care of the kids for us, and on Friday morning, we headed for Tennessee.  We had a wonderful couple of days of conversation, laughing, game-playing, good food, and touristy stuff.

On the way up Thursday, the guys indulged us with an impromptu stop at a needlework shop near this mountain.

The weather was lovely and the shop had rocking chairs on the front porch, so we sat in the sun and chatted for a while before continuing our journey.  (My mom will be pleased to hear that I bought of skein of yarn as my souvenir!).

In town, the guys graciously hunted down a quilt shop for us and then wandered around with us there and let us buy some souvenir fabric.  I am not sharing pictures of my selection yet, because it is destined to be a pieced creation for my female offspring, and I don't want the recipient (who looks at this blog) to see it yet!

After the quilt shop, we went to a huge knife shop.  It had every kind of knife, sword, battle weapon, and related paraphernalia you can possibly imagine.  Technically,  this was the guys' stop, but I thought it was quite fascinating, too!

 And of course, there was an abundance of gorgeous scenery everywhere.  We had a lovely view of a mountain range from our windows/patio.  It looked different each morning we were there.

The trip through the mountain pass didn't give us any widespread views of the mountains, since the Great Smoky Mountains lived up to their name on Sunday and there was a lot of fog!  However, the snow and ice was beautiful, and what we could see of the mountains was beautiful, too, even in the fog.

 

 

 

We had such a nice weekend!  Thanks to Jon & Karen for hosting us...and thanks to Bruce's parents for coming to keep the kids for us.

Here is one last picture of the four of us -- taken on our patio at twilight, with the mountains in the background...