That’s right! 14 wonderful years with the love of my life. September 7th was our anniversary and we decided to celebrate the event with our puppy dog, Tigger, in Gatlinburg, TN. It was my first time there and it was a lot of fun. Of course having Tigger with us was a bit limiting as to which shops we could visit or what restaurants we could eat at. But we did have luck in find restaurants we could sit on the patio along with Tigger. As for shops, we did actually find several shops that allowed to bring Tigger inside. One them was a high end furniture store—an Amish store. Incredible craftsmanship on super nice products and they didn’t hesitate to invite us in.
So the first day we were up there we decided to go hiking (waddling for me) and it was fun. We drove into the North Carolina side of the Smoky Foothills. We hiked 3.3 miles along a creek in complete shade into the town of Cherokee. Once there we found ourselves a Dairy Queen with a patio and sat outside in the incredibly pleasant weather and had lunch. As a bonus, we had lunchtime entertainment. Two members of the Cherokee Nation were there performing native dances while of them played on the drum. Of course they didn’t do any sacred dances out of respect for their ancestors. However, they have many dances that were intended to be performed in front of other tribes. It was a lot of fun. After lunch we walked the 3.3 miles back to the homestead and the trail head. Here is a picture of the place
There’s just something about the homestead that piqued my interest. I can see myself living on a homestead like this during that time period. It was incredible to see! I don’t know when it was built, but it was sometime ago. It was actually a challenge to get this shot with no people or automobiles visible in it. The entire homestead is fenced off, has 5 outbuildings, and a fenced off garden within the fence that outlined the property. Just seeing this was worth our trip into North Carolina.
Our 2nd day there, as I mentioned earlier, was spent entirely in Gatlinburg walking up and down the strip. We walked about 4 miles total that day and a good share of it was in the direct sunshine. When we got back to the hotel, .8 miles from the strip, we stopped on the grass out in back of the hotel to let Tigger do his thing. Of course he took one look at that creek, walked out into the water and promptly laid himself down in the water. The water was deep enough that it was flowing up and over his rump. He’s never done that before and we’ve had him since he was 10 weeks old. This little 4.4 mile walk through Gatlinburg took us the better part of 5 hours. Tigger was so good during the trip among all the people. It was shocking how much attention he attracted from people of all ages. There were 3 little kids, a boy and 2 girls, and they sat down on the ground to play with Tigger. Tigger loved it. They also had some brilliant suggestions on how to take care of Tigger. lol. They were so cute and so very sincere.
Well the trip was a blast. Gatlinburg is only 5 1/2 hours away from our current home so it wasn’t a miserable drive. Oh yeah, you should have seen the crowds in Pigeon Forge. It was horribly crowded. We only had to traverse about 3 miles of the city, but it took us nearly 20 minutes to do it. Though I hate, hate, hate crowds, this didn’t bother me. Our whole reason for going on this trip was to go hiking and be out and away from all the people. On the trail we hiked we only passed about 15 people total. That’s my idea of a vacation. I hope everyone could have such a relaxing vacation as what we had.
Included here is a picture of our little hairy son. He is 10 yrs 8 months old. Like i said earlier, we’ve had him since he was 10 weeks old. Of course you can really see his age when you look at his muzzle. He’s gone from a mostly pure black muzzle to a muzzle that is almost completely white. It is saddening to actually see his age and know that he is not a little puppy anymore. Here is a picture of my little boy at the trail head before our hike.
That’s about it for this post. I know I’ve promised this in the past, but I will try to post more often. This would be a great place to continue my journal which I used to be really good at keeping current. Well, we’ll see how it works out.
Bye for now.
