Travel day to the Great Smoky Mountains

---

Today was going to be a big travel day and Tory and Jenn took Rosie and Vivian in the Tahoe while Steve and Mike took Grayson, Ellie, and Nathan in the Ford truck pulling the camper. We packed up the remainder of the camper and headed out for the drive to Townsend and Cade’s Cove. It took about 5 hours to get to Jenns parent’s house, Kirby and Donna (Paw and Maw.) With 5 kids there were many bathroom and food breaks at Dunkin’ Donuts, the side of the road, and McDonald’s for lunch. The 3 big kids talked the whole ride and were on pretty good behavior while Rosie and Vivian watched movies happily during the drive.

We got to Kirby and Donna’s house in Townsend and were greeted and treated very well. We thought Vivian would nap but she didn’t, and she and Rosie were very happy to be out of their car seats and play with all the new toys. Mike and the 3 kids continued to drive on with the camper to setup the camper along with Kirby and their sleeper trailer. Donna and Jenn showed us the house and then left to the campgrounds too. We settled into the downstairs of the very nice 2-unit house and setup Rosie’s bed and Vivian’s crib.

After the campgrounds were setup everyone came back to the house for dinner before going back to the camp to sleep there. Donna made a delicious white chicken chili and served some sweet iced tea and lemonade as expected when you’re in the South! The incredible hospitality included cupcakes with oreo cookie eyes for the kids, apple pie with ice cream, and fire man hats for everyone to run around playing. Grayson and Rosie were very cute playing hide and seek especially when they jammed into pantries and closets together, they can be very cute when they play activities that show their youth of 4 (Gray) and almost 4 years old (Rosie.) We left Nathan excitedly to go sleep in the camper, which he could not stop talking about, and settled downstairs to get some good rest after a long travel day.

*Most of the photos on this entry are for tomorrow's Cade's Cover exploration, but I wanted to spread out the number of photos since this is the day we took the most.

---

Photos

City of Townsend
Where we stayed when not camping

Redlight/Greenlight
Tory got them running early before the long drive