Great Smokey Mountains: Day 5 - Traveling Home - The Rolling Hills of TN & Georgia with Some Moon Pies & RC Cola

Day 5 - Tuesday - Leisurely Travel Day Home

We slept in and enjoyed some breakfast on the porch before packing up and opting to take the backroads south to Atlanta, instead of the interstate. We read about the far east part of Tennessee that we were in, and enjoyed the rolling green hills and the small towns. We found out that Tennessee was famous for Moon Pies and Georgia was home to RC Cola, so at the tiny town right at the state line (no sign, of course,) we stopped at an old gas station to try them both out. Our flight was at 4:30 PM and unfortunately, we had a stop added via DFW due to the massive amounts of Corona flight cancellations. So, our quick and simple direct flights, that we had booked 9 months ago, were much longer. Before leaving, we made a conscious decision to embrace it, not let it stress us out and be thankful that Corona did cause us to cancel this bucket list family trip that was 2 years in the making. We had purposefully chosen to fly direct to Atlanta to be able to explore the city with the kids on Monday and Tuesday. In hind sight, when they added a stop to our flight, we should have cancelled and flown to Knoxville, which is only 30 minutes to Sevierville, where the hotels just outside the Smokey's. We had all largely packed in our 5 backpacks we took to LeConte and then had our Away medium roller filled with a few more clothes packed with tons of snacks. With our limited time and Corona, I didn't even want to mess with finding grocery stores to buy food the night we arrived. We just left the larger bag in the car at the trailhead.

Flying on day #76 of a global pandemic may not have been ideal, but as I write this 14 days later, with no symptoms, I feel like the risk was worth it for this particular trip. We took every precautions flying through 3 large airports and the kid's understood how serious it was regarding how careful our entire family was. They knew if one of us got it, all 5 of us would have it. They knew weeks before leaving that we would put ourselves in a strict quarantine for at least 10 days before we would even be around neighbors. We had to say no to a huge weekend at the lake with friends that first weekend back and that was very sad, but not a hard decision. We all agreed it was worth it and we knew, before hand, what we had to do to keep our friends, family and community safe if we took this trip and we felt that we could do it and keep everyone around us safe. Who would have ever thought our family would ever look like this while traveling on a family vacation.

The kid's journals shortly after we finished the hike down from LeConte:

Since our Palo Duro trip 3.5 years ago, the kids have started a sweet tradition of making us thank you notes after our family trips. It still surprises me every time, but is one of my favorite memories.