Our summer vacation was a smashing success. We broke the trip up on the way out with a one day stop in Nashville to pick up some more family. By Thursday afternoon, we were in the mountains, dividing our time among
Dollywood,
Splash Country,
Ripley's I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Aquarium, and our
lovely cabin. (Those are my children in the photo, cooling off in a mister fan at D-wood.)
Dollywood was a very pleasant surprise; the employees were - without exception - extremely polite and the grounds were immaculate. My son rode his first (and probably last) roller coaster, and my daughter was pissed that she was too short to ride ...
Splash Country, technically part of Dollywood, was a bit of a disappointment, just because it was fucking packed. It also reinforced my belief that I would never, ever want to see 99.99% of the human population naked. (And it didn't help that my brother-in-law
Matt reminded me that we were basically bathing with all those slobs.)
Ripley's Bullshit Or Not Aquarium was pretty cool, but my kids got bored half-way through. Things did pick up again, however, when they realized they could pet the horseshoe crabs. Gatlinburg was nice, but Pigeon Forge made me think of Panama City, and not in a good way.
Anyway, we're back. The Johnny Cash rest stop was a welcome sight on the way home, and I must say, the Man In Black keeps his restrooms as clean as an operating room.
