The vacation continued...

The next stop was the Calhoun's in North Carolina. My cousin Tisha, her husband Curteis, and their two kids. We left the Day's on Thursday and drove down to their house which is just outside of Raleigh. Stayed the night there and drove with them to the great Smokie Mountains National Park. We love camping, and when we camped as kids it was always with My cousin Tisha's family. It seemed a fitting way to hang out with her. I hadn't seen her in three years and our kids had never met so we were excited to spend some time with them. We left in the afternoon and underestimated the drive time because we arrived in the dark (10pm) with grumpy, feverish, and sleepy kids. Set up in the dark, and went to sleep. Thankfully the kids slept in a little in the morning (Tisha's kids weren't so forgiving -they stuck to their regular schedules and were up at 6) We spent the day exploring the park, went to the visitors center, and drove to the highest point Clingman's Dome. The drive takes you up almost to the top and then it's a very steep 1/2 mile hike to the lookout tower. We made it trailing after the Calhoun's, by this time, Margie and Jakey were both not feeling well and had fevers. Margie rode in the stroller and we took turns pushing her and carrying Jakey. But, we did make it and the view was beautiful. We took another small hike on the AT for a few minutes and made it down just in time to beat the oncoming rainstorm that we had been watching all afternoon. Luckily it was short so we were able to have a great dinner of Hamburgers and hot dogs and of course smores. The kids were feeling a little better by this time and when we finally got them in bed so we could have a little grown-up time, the rain started again. But this time it didn't stop. It rained all night and all morning. We cut our morning short and packed up in the rain. Our tent held out pretty well, Tisha and Curteis' did not. They had puddles. We did not get much quality time with the cousins the last 12 hours or so with them. The rain really did put a damper on the end of the trip but it was well worth it and tons of fun anyway. It's trips like this that don't always go the way we've planned we always remember the most - Did I mention those camping trips when we were kids were at the Oregon Coast, there was plenty of rain there and many days we spent playing card games in the car. We appreciate the Calhoun's for taking their weekend to spend with us, it was so great to spend time together. And it was, despite the rain, a great weekend.
I hope to get a few more photo's from Tisha for the slide show and the last few are on the trip home when we stopped in Memphis and did a 5 minute drive-by of Graceland. I would have signed my name on the wall if I had a pen but I didn't. Now I can at least say that I've been there (sort-of).