It had taken me 2 years to get reservations at LeConte Lodge at the top of the Great Smokey Mountains in Tennessee. When I had gotten a room last October in the lottery for May, we immediately booked flight, not know that 6 months later, our world would be a different place. During the last 90 days, watching all the National Parks close and then begin to re-open, I felt at piece that if the lodge re-opened in time for our end of May trip, we would go, even if that meant risking bring in airports and airplanes. In October, we had decided to fly direct into Atlanta and then explore the city however with the dramatic decrease in flights, our quick little flight turned turned into having connections in Dallas with a couple of hours of layovers. Blake and I chalked it up to the tradeoff of traveling during this time and we decided to embrace it and just be grateful to be on another family adventure seeing the nation.
I had no fears about traveling until 4AM, when my alarm went off on Friday morning and I was worried that technically San Antonio was still in there city wide stay at home order, which had been extended for 6 more days until June 4. I was worried what people would say at the airport. But I once there, it was fine. It was very quiet compared to a normal Friday morning of Summer time, which made everything even easier.
This was our first time in 13 years flying and not using family boarding. That is quite a momentous event, especially since we forgot to get our boarding passes right at 24 hours. At this time, Southwest is only selling 2/3 of the seats on flights, so we had no problem all sitting together. They boarded everyone in groups of 10 and everyone had to wear their masks the entire time on the flights.
Once we got to Atlanta, we had a 4 hour drive to Pigeon Forge & Sevierville area, where our hotel was for the night. First, we had to experience some delicious Southern food and found a delicious spot called The Corner Grille for Chicken and Waffles. It was seriously so, so good and I wish we could have eaten there again. When we arrived in Pigeon Forge and Sevierville, we were shocked to find towns that were filled with an incredible amount of things to do with families. I thought of it as a "Vegas" for kids. We instantly knew, we wanted to spend some more time here. We ate dinner at our little hotel's pool and since I minimized all packing, I had made everyone take out swimsuits. BIG mistake. Addison snuck hers back in and Delaney just jumped in with her clothes on. Okay, I have learned my lesson!
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