Tennessee (Part 1)

For Sarah's birthday this year I decided to surprise her with a trip to a state we have wanted to visit for quite some time, Tennessee. Our destination was Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, along with the Great Smoky Mountains. The trip was a blast and I hope to visit there again someday. So lets go!

Friday

The traffic through the cities was terrible. Partially my fault for picking 4th of July weekend for a trip. This is Cincinnati.

Entering Kentucky!

....and she's out.

Chinese! It was terrible...

She lives!

Look mountains! We must be getting close.

Tennessee!

After a long 10ish hours (due to stop and go traffic) and multiple rest stops we finally made it to our motel in Pigeon Forge, Tennesse around 5:00pm.

The Smoky's from out room.

Our room.

Sarah opening her gifts.

After Sarah opened all of her presents it was time for dinner at the Old Mill Restaurant, a place decided well in advance for it's combination of history and good southern cooking.

Let's go!

Clearly she is ready as well.

There it is. The oldest operating mill in the state. Still grinding grain for the moonshine distillery next door. The Old Forge Distillery.

While we were waiting to be called for dinner we decided to check out the distillery next door.

They even had free samples!

Once we were done with our samples (and bought some moonshine!) we headed back over to the restaurant.

It was a really cool place with some amazing food.

The view from our table. Sarah got the country fried steak and I got the fired chicken. They were both delicious and served with what seemed like a mountain of sides.

After the restaurant we checked out a couple of shops and then headed back to the motel.

At one of the shops Sarah tried on this hat.

When we got back to the motel we mixed some moonshine with tea and then headed to bed. We were both looking forward to the next day of our adventure.

Thanks for reading!