SATURDAY - JULY 7, 2001  
               through
TUESDAY - JULY 10, 2001    

WE SPENT THE FINAL few days of our vacation in a chalet resort in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. Mom and Dad left yesterday and stayed in Virginia along the way, but we have only a five-hour drive, so we started out at 8:30 this morning, driving down I-75 to Tennessee. Of course the online travel programs that predict how long it will take were wrong; it took about 6 hours of actual driving time. Grandpa said that was because both MapQuest and Expedia seemed to have ignored the 60 miles between the Kentucky/Tennessee state line and Knoxville. That doesn't count the time we spent at breakfast, or at lunch. We stopped at Colonel Sanders for lunch. But this wasn’t just any ol’ Colonel Sanders. This was the Colonel Sanders, as in Sanders Café, the lovingly restored original restaurant that was originally operated by Harlan Sanders and his wife in the 1940's and ‘50s. It was in this store that the famous eleven secret herbs and spices were first put together to create Colonel Sanders' Original Recipe Kentucky Fried Chicken. And it was the bypassing of Corbin by the new Interstate 75 in 1956 that caused Harlan Sanders, sixty-six years old at the time, to begin a new career peddling pressure-cooked fried chicken from restaurant to restaurant around the country, resulting in one of the most famous products in America.

We were about an hour behind schedule. Dad and Mom called on the cell phone when they arrived. That was about 1:30, and and we got there about 3:00. It was great to see our parents again after three weeks, but the real great part was when they got into the back seat of our Neon... "Wow! Look at all the room! And doors for the rear passengers. And you can open the back windows (a little)!". Compared to the Tiburon it's like a luxurious limousine.

 OAK HAVEN RESORT has many log-cabin chalets spread about a steep, wooded,hilly area with beautiful landscaping. Our cabin, number 26 (Mountain Haven) was built just this past spring. Everything is so clean and fresh and looks brand-new.  The other cabins also look just as new, at least from the outside.

There are two actual bedrooms, with a king size bed in each, plus a queen size fold out couch in the living room that Rachael slept one and another in the basement game room, which was Ryan's. Each bedroom and the game room has its own full bathroom with a shower, and there's a jacuzzi bathtub in each of the two bedrooms. In addition, there's a true hot tub spa on the screened-in deck, which got a lot of use. The kitchen is furnished with all the modern appliances, dishes, cookware, and utensils. Dad and Grandpa drove to a nearby Kroger's and bought enough food to supply an army for a month.

The basement has a full size billiards table, color cable tv, vcr, stereo, ping pong table, and an air-less hockey table. There's a gas grill on the deck, which we used to grill hamburgers and sausages on the deck for dinner tonight. Then we all took turns playing pool in the game room downstairs. This was Mom’s first time playing pool and she's pretty good at it (at least compared to the rest of us). Then everyone got into the the hot tub on the deck. Well, not at the same time. But we could get up to four of us at a time into it.

It was supposed to be really lousy weather this whole weekend, but it only seemed to rain when we weren't going anywhere anyway. Like early in the morning or late at night. We saw lots of miniature golf places in Sevierville and Pigeon Forge, and we played at one in Gatlinburg, and we got to swim in the resort swimming pool. Also in Gatlinburg, we went to a place called The Village with lots of neat little shops including one with toys and Aunt Linda bought us all ice cream cones at Baskin-Robbins. There's a really neat fountain in the middle of The Village, with falling water and live flames shooting out the top of it.

Before we knew it, it was Tuesday morning and time for everyone to go home. We had a long drive (over eleven hours), but the vast spaciousness of the Neon rear seat made it easy.

Besides, we could hardly wait to get home and see our friends.

And pet our cat, Romeo.

And get to work on that scrapbook...

All text and photos ©2001 by John Lipman. All rights reserved.