Our Smoky Mountains Vacation: Day 4

Kyle resting before breakfast

Thursday, ah Thursday, this will probably be a shorter recollection...  Well,  I woke up this day feeling sick again, so we decided to take the morning easy. We hung around the cabin, drank some tea, and Janice made us yet another delicious breakfast.  This was probably our favorite one.  It consisted of the fruit plate, french toast, some kind of apple muffin with a thin orange slice at the bottom of it, potatoes, and ham!

Check out that ham!

The best breakfast of the week!

We heard about this place called "Cherokee."  It's an Indian reservation where you could go to a museum for free and then see a bunch of Cherokee or general Indian stuff, at a market or something.  There are also Indian dances of the seven tribes!  Janice raved about it, as well as one of the couples that had gone the day before, so we decided to give it a try.

Well after a lot of confusion and an hour and a half of driving, we finally got there!  We went into the museum and found out that this one costs money, so we asked where the free one was, and the man kindly told us. 

Well, we never found the free museum, and we never saw a big market place, or any dancing.  The Police couple had gone this day and said the same thing, but the German couple went and apparently saw all the good stuff, so I'm not sure where we went wrong.  We just saw a touristy strip of a bunch of the same shops selling Native American stuff that was made in China... Wah wah... I didn't even take any pictures...

The little village at the Welcome Center

One good thing that came out of this trip to Cherokee was our drive back.  We found out that we could get back to Pigeon Forge (where we were headed) through the National Park.  We hit a really cool welcome center with a sample village and some education on the history of the Smokies.  The drive through the mountains was beautiful!  We pulled over a number of times to get pictures of the mountains.

Kyle at one of the overlooks

Addison :)

The Family

We made it!

Kyle at the Bookstore

My mom and her husband Jeff were so kind in taking a couple vacation days to come up and visit us!  We finally made it to Pigeon Forge and met them at the Tanger Outlets.  (we had some time to kill before our evening activity).  Oh yeah, Kyle would probably be upset if I left out one of his favorite parts of the day, the two discount bookstores we visited.  That's really all I have to say about that.  I mean, it was great, but if he ever writes a blog he can talk all about it.  It's more of his thing.


The Dixie Stampede (I always wanted to go!)


 Finally, 4:45 rolled around, and it was time to go to... THE DIXIE STAMPEDE!  Ha!  I had never been and neither had my mom or Jeff, so I was really looking forward to it!  We got there early enough to see the pre-show, a band of three men singing and playing the banjo and guitar.  It was a fun kick-off to the night.



The Pre-Show

 

Jeff, Mom, and me


Once 6:00 hit, it was time for the main event!  The show really was fun.  I was worried that it would be geared more towards children, and it was a little goofy at times, but overall I really did enjoy it.  I'm so glad I finally got to see The Dixie Stampede.  The food was delicious too.  We got some kind of potato creamy soup, a ridiculously good biscuit, a rotisserie chicken, slice of pork, and a baked potato!  My favorite part was dessert, the apple pie/pastry (I need to get more educated on foods). 



Inside the show.  No flash photography once it started...

 

After the show, it was time for bed, so back to the cabin we went.  One more busy, fun-filled day complete!