Thursday, April 25, 2013

Gatlinburg Day 4 and 5

We decided to take things a little easier on the fourth day of our vacation.  We hung out at the condo until after lunch.  The girls went swimming in the morning, and we sat and watched them.  It was great to have some time to read.  After lunch we headed to the aquarium in Gatlinburg.  It is one of our favorite places to visit in the strip.  Really we come to Gatlinburg and can spend very little money.  This is worth the money.  Since we homeschool they do give us a very good price. 

At the aquarium we were able to see the divers feed the sting rays and dive into a tank with a bunch of saltwater fish and feed them.  It is great to see all the fish interact with the divers.  We also were able to watch them feed the penguins.  I could watch this kind of stuff all day.  Kaliegh also loves to go to the aquarium.  I was shocked how much she knew without even looking at the signs.  She kept saying, I read it in a book.  She is not a big reader so it was neat to hear that she has read something.  It also wasn't anything I made her read.  Need to keep that in mind when I am thinking of reading assignments. 

My favorite thing at the Aquarium was trying to touch the sting rays.  Kaliegh was very good at it.  I wasn't very good until the diver came over and enticed the sting ray to come close to the wall.  One time the sting ray was sliding across the wall and decided to splash the kids that were trying to pet it.  That was really funny. 

After that we headed to the mirror maze.  The kids think that is so fun.  We did have a great time.  I think they made it easier this time then last time.  It seemed to take us a long time to find the exit.  This time we found it right way.  It was fun to have races as teams to see who could get all the way through the fastest.

Now this is where our day gets interesting.  Some how we got rooked into sitting through a time share to get some tickets to see a show.  After all of it the man made a ton of promises all lies but we did get tickets and it only cost us $20 for a $170 show.  They only kept us in the presentation for 90 minutes so not to bad of a deal.

Today it started with us going to the presentation for the time share.  Then we headed to have lunch at a park.  After the lunch we headed to another waterfall.  This was the Baskins Falls.  It was located in the Roaring Fork Nature Drive.  The hike was probably this toughest we have done all week.   It wasn't very long but it was uphill the entire way back.  Not only a slight uphill but very steep.  It was downhill all the way there which seemed so easy, but we paid for it on the way back.  Once we got to the falls it was really cool.
We climbed on some of the rocks.  Nobody was there so we had the view to ourselves.  It wasn't one of the more heavily hiked trails.  It was really nice.

After the falls we headed to go see the Lumberjack show.  That was a really nice show.  There is no way I would pay full price for it, but we definitely got a deal.  The girls really enjoyed it.  I thought it was very family friendly.

At the end of it all we headed back and of course hit the pool.  It was a great couple days.  Hard to believe tomorrow is our last day.  We are hoping to take it a little easy but still venture out.  Try to wear the kids out so they will be tired for the ride home.




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