Adventures In Gatlinburg: Anakeesta

I have to learn not to take so many pictures on vacation - I get paralyzed by the task of processing them all and then it takes forever to get them posted!

We had a wonderful week in Gatlinburg with Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Sunny, Uncle Chris, and Olivia. The mountains might not be as tall as the ones in Colorado, but it was very beautiful and we enjoyed some great hikes and a lot of fun. Our first day there we went to Anakeesta, a kind of adventure park at the top of a mountain. We used our time waiting for tickets for some photos.

This was an example of the mountain roller coaster car - she got to ride the real one later!

We had to take a ski lift up to the fun at the top. It was a bit of a long ride, and there was a lot of stopping with a little bouncing and swaying. Let's just say I don't have any pictures of Daddy looking this happy on the way up.

Uncle Chris broke his foot just before we left, so he got to enjoy riding around the park instead. I'm sure he would have much rather been walking, but he made the best of it.

Agnes discovered she loves playing with ice cubes when it's hot.

One of the activities at the top was a mountaintop playground. Much clambering ensued.

They set up a lot of photo ops at the top. We apparently aren't very good at staged photo ops.

Shockingly, Gussie let me take this picture and did not demand that I delete it after he saw it. He's into the mountain man look.

We also walked on a series of treetop bridges which were super fun. We kept our eyes open for wildlife (especially bears!) but didn't see any.

All the kids got to ride the mountainside roller coaster, but it wasn't super visible so we don't have a lot of pictures. This was the ride back up the hill at the end.

The big kids and I even got to go ziplining! Catherine, Mary, and Michael Jr loved it. I didn't hate it, and parts of it were fun, but the two times we had to just walk off the edge not holding on to anything and just wait through a second of freefall before the auto belay caught us, well, it took me several extra seconds to convince my legs that wasn't one of the dumbest ideas ever. But we made it to the end and the kids are ready to go again. Probably we should wait until Agnes is a little bigger though - she did good for a while but we were gone for more than an hour and when she suddenly got tired she wasn't impressed that I wasn't there. 

Daddy took this video of us setting off on the first one, then said he couldn't watch anymore. Ziplining is not for him.