There's No Place Like Home

It was coming down to the end of the fiscal year at work and I still had a week's vacation to take. I had to either take them or lose them so, naturally, I took them. We didn't really have big vacation plans or much money to do anything but I had 65,000 Marriott points I could use. We decided to blow 30,000 points by staying in the new Fairfield behind the Bass Pro Shops in Kodak for 2 nights and just do whatever comes to mind (on a limited budget).

We started off by going to Douglas Dam for a very nice picnic. Mary had fixed fried chicken, potato salad, deviled eggs, and had bought some of those pull-apart rolls. We ate like kings! We spent an hour or so taking pictures up around the lookout and then drove down to the base of the dam. There wasn't very many people out for a Saturday and we were very thankful for that. I guess we spent a little over an hour down by the dam taking pictures and goofing off and then we headed toward Sevierville.

By the time we got to the Parkway, traffic had really picked up. Two lines of cars as far as you could see were heading into Pigeon Forge. Making things doubly worse is all the road construction being done on the Parkway. I grudgingly took my place in the traffic and putted along with the rest of the idiots on the road. We finally ducked into one of our favorite places, the Christian Book Warehouse. We were in there for a long time browsing the books. I found a great buy in 3 used Westminster Larger Catechism books which are packed full of good sermon material.

Finally it got close to 3:00 and we were able to check-in at the Fairfield. Since it is a brand-new hotel everything was spotless and the carpet still smelled new. It was a nice place but our room was a little cramped for all 5 of us. We settled in and were just thankful that we weren't having to pay for our stay there. Mary had bought a DVD for us to watch while there, Race To Witch Mountain, which we thoroughly enjoyed. We find it really fun to turn out all the lights, close the curtains and watch a movie in a hotel room. It makes for some great family togetherness.

We didn't do a whole lot while we were up there. It was just way too crowded since it was Labor Day weekend. We packed up and checked out on Monday around 11:00 and headed back toward home. I came home the back way and we stopped off at Mascot Park which is only 7 miles from our house. We had more fun at the park than we did on our entire stay up in Sevierville. We started questioning why we even went up there considering we can't stand to be around a lot of people and we didn't have any money to spend. Oh well, live and learn I reckon. One thing is for sure, there's no place like home!