Road Trip

David and I decided to take a family vacation to the mountains of North Carolina to visit his grandpa and his wife. This is a trip we have wanted to take for a while. David hasn't seen them since 2003, and I hadn't since the year before. We were able to plan our trip so we would be able to go to David's family reunion in Alabama on the way home.

We set off on Tuesday afternoon after David got off work. We drove until we got to Mobile, AL. We attempted to stop a couple of times, but all of the hotels were booked. We ended up a few hours away almost to Montgomery. To put it in perspective...we stopped in Mobile at 11:00 and I don't think we found a hotel room until 1:30 or so. Lily was awake when we hit Mobile, but she was asleep by the time we got to the hotel. She was back awake when we got to the room, but she did not want to go back to sleep. David and I got into bed, and expected Lily to go to sleep soon...we were WRONG! She did not want to go to bed in the pack n play, so I picked her up to go to bed in the bed with us. This ended up waking her up even more. She played with David most of the night, and she kept giving him lots and lots of kisses. David let me get some sleep because I was going to drive in the morning, and he can sleep in the car pretty easily. So Lily stayed up all night, but as soon as we got in the car this happened!



That's right, she fell fast asleep. How nice was that for her! At least it gave us some quiet time in the car. She ended up sleeping until we stopped for lunch where she got her first happy meal. She loved the chicken nuggets, and they worked so well for her eating in the car.

We got to David's grandpa's house Wednesday evening, and we spent the evening hanging out on their patio and then had dinner. The next day we went to the Cherokee reservation. There they had a bear park where you can feed the bears they have. It was so neat. The bears were hilarious, they begged for food so much.

Then for $3 you could go and feed baby bears. It was so funny, we fed them lucky charms and some little bear food. When we first went in the room one of the bears swatted the food cup out of my hand. Thankfully it hit the cup or I would have been in trouble. Here are a couple of pictures of us feeding the bears.

The next day David and his grandpa went to play golf. David had so much fun playing on the course he played so many times when he was younger (even though it has changed quite a bit). Marilyn, Lily, and I went down to town and did a little bit of shopping. It was so nice to have a relaxing day.

Later that night, we went into town by ourselves and ate dinner and did a bit of shopping. Here is a picture of the storm that came in that night.

We has such a wonderful time in the mountains. Despite all the driving, it was such a relaxing trip. We can't wait to go back and visit Maggie Valley again. It is neat for me to spend time where David spent such a large part of his childhood.

Here is one final picture of Warren, Marilyn, and Lily on our last night there.