Hello fellow readers, this is Eleanor, I'm pretty sure all of you know that I am the daughter of my mom, Michelle. She usually writes most of the blog content for our national park trips. Before I start talking about our day I need to warn the readers that I am sarcastic and this is written from a different perspective that is not my dear mothers.
Now, my brother and I where sleeping in this one room with a pool table in it. Besides the point but my brother thinks I'm horrible at pool, but I'm not getting a job playing pool, so to move on, it was 6:42 am and my grandparents had gone down to get coffee. So this house was small, with the primary level and an upstairs, so if one light is turned on it lights up everything and you can see it pretty clearly. My dog, Hermione seeing the light went down the staircase making much noise with her claws on wood. it was still a little dark so she saw my grandparents and she barked at them. She's a very protective dog. Then with an exquisite wake up call it was time to start our day.
After lots of getting ready, a failed game of pool where the white ball fell noisily down the stairs, and some pancakes with raspberry syrup, we got in our car. We where staying at a place basically on the side of the mountain. you could literally look out any window and see mountains. It takes 10-15 minutes to get up the steep hills and down the hills. There are also really crazy turns. We had driven for a while and I had no idea where we where going. The thing with our family is we research a ton of places to go but never go to them. we find the best hikes on accident. Or we get lost. A lot.
We Finally arrived at a visitor center and we had lost our grandparents who had been dutifully following us since the house. My mom and dad went into the center and my brother and I stayed in the stifling hot car. My grandparents showed up soon. My brother annoyed me by playing on a loud app on his phone while I thought about how leaving my brother and I in this scorching car is basically illegal. After a long time and a bathroom break, we got to this river that was for handicapped people and their immediate family only. Good time for my grandpa to be here. You couldn't really get in the water their so we decided that we might find a place to go in and park. But, we didn't. We decided to part paths, so the grands went to explore towns while we after a while got lunch at a place to sooth some aching headaches.
After a bit we found a place where you could use a raft and float down the river. We decided to do it, but dad stayed back with the dog. First we got water shoes then took a short one minute bus ride to the launch area we got in and it was slooooooooooooooooow. But, after a bit there where some fierce rapids. A middle aged man comically fell off twice, he was okay though. Then it would slow down again and do a couple more. My brother was lagging behind a lot so my mom was able to stop in some wild current and wait for him. I located a mossy rock and steered toward it, then stopped my feet on it. I then slipped on it and went to the other side so I was holding on pretty tight for a while. Finally the slowpoke himself lumbered on over and we could let go of our wonderful stones. Then at the end we got out of the water, where we were greeted by an exuberant Hermione. Since we could actually tube until 5:00 we decided to do it again. Once we got on the bus the person driving it said it was all red on the radar. He also said that it would rain through most of our trip. I sarcastically said "Well, that's great." It only actually drizzled a little and took 30 minutes, the other one took an hour. I only stubbed my toe on a rock once and scraped my knee on a rock once at least.
Once we where all back in the car with a tired Hermione we set off. My brother wanted to go to this part of the river with a rope swing that you could jump off of. So we went there. Some people where there, but my brother and I where able to try the rope swing. Hermione got to splash in the water too. We where tired so we went back to our cabin and Ethan and I hopped in the hot tub after bringing in a couple things. I then went too write some of this, ate dinner and wrote more while my grandparents asked if I was writing a novel. I'm not a great at typing. Thanks for reading.
-Eleanor
*A few mom addendums:
We have not seen any major wildlife, but Will did go to take the dog out in the dark last night and ran into a snake in the driveway, forcing him to abort the walk and skitter back to the cabin.
Also, Will and the kids walked the dog after we got here yesterday, our neighbors said they had just seen a bear on our property. We must have missed it!
When we separated from my parents they drove 35 minutes in the wrong direction then got back into Townsend again before going the right way through the park to Gatlinburg. According to my dad, he said, it's just a "tourist trap" and "Wisconsin Dells on steroids." We knew this because we stayed outside of Gatlinburg on our first trip here in 2014.
We grilled chicken for dinner, and our chef, er, I mean my mom made risotto and zucchini. It was delicious. We plan to finish the movie Cruella, which we started too late last night and were falling asleep to.
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