The whole point of this particular vacation was to spend time with Rich's sister Judy and her family, who live in Mauldin, South Carolina.
We left Michigan last Saturday about noon and drove for 5 hours to Lexington, Kentucky. We stopped there because 5 hours is our driving limit time! We checked in our hotel and had dinner at Bob Evans (because Cracker Barrel was too crowded). Stopped in a store to buy some drinks to take back to the room and stood in line with a lady from Michigan, who happened to be a huge U of M fan and she was pumped because apparently they won the game that day! She was duly impressed that I was a employee of the great institution!
The next day after driving a few hours to Knoxville, Tennessee, we had the pleasure of meeting and having lunch with Donna Martin, fellow blogger (Cottage Days and Journeys), Facebook friend and photographer extraordinaire! She was just as sweet as I knew she would be and we had a nice conversation which included some great photography tips!
After leaving the lunch we continued on to the Great Smoky Mountains and Cherokee, North Carolina. We planned to stay the night and meet up with Judy and her daughter Ann at the casino resort there. Now I will put some pictures of the beautiful Smoky Mountains here but really, pictures absolutely do not show how majestic and beautiful they are!
The resort we stayed at was on beautiful grounds.
On Monday we drove to Mauldin SC and spent the next 3 days hanging out with family. One day we went to downtown Greenville, SC to have do a little shopping and see the nice park and waterfall they have there.
Look at the crazy roots of this tree!
This is the waterfall. Due to the dry summer we all had it's less than 1/3 of what it normally is!
Here's Rich and Judy. He was so happy to spend time with his sister.
We left Mauldin on Thursday morning and only drove as far as Asheville, NC. We wanted to go to the Biltmore Estate. which I will tell you about in my next post. We also wanted to meet up with old friends of ours, Mike and Sharon, who live in Brevard, NC which is close to there.
On Friday we left Asheville and on the advice of our friend Mike we took the long way and drove through Cumberland Gap on a beautiful winding road through the mountains with stunning views! A little nerve wracking for Rich but I enjoyed it!
I do want to show you this interesting cemetery going up the mountain we saw in Cumberland Gap.
If you look on the left under the blue tent there was a service going on,
We drove as far as Dayton Ohio on Friday, pushing it a little longer than we like to drive because we wanted to be closer to home on Saturday and get home early.
Our hotel was the nicest of the trip and we took advantage of this pool, which felt so good after a long day of driving.
There was a lot more than I wanted to see and do, like spending some time at Great Smoky Mountain National Park but that will have to wait until the next time!
Next up Biltmore House.
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