Mountain Trip with Gabby!

We took a spontaneous trip to the mountains this weekend. Haven't done that in a long time. It was a great opportunity to test out Sonny's Father's Day present! Ashley bought him a GPS and we had a great time trying to figure it out on the road. We kept trying to come up with a name for the GPS. Many times, her name was "Dumb Azz" but think Sonny finally settled on Gabby!!

We drove up on Saturday and spent the night in Maggie's Valley. It was so pretty. We drove over to Cherokee also. Boy, has it changed since I was a kid. I remember going to Cherokee and Ghost Town with my Aunt Deese & Uncle Butch. There would be an Indian Chief standing on the sidewalk waving to everyone. And, during the trip to the mountains, we were always on the lookout for bears - even seeing one once in a while. Now Cherokee is pretty commercialized with junk stores abound and even a casino!! We walked into the casino (Harrah's) and looked around. It was pretty smoky and the Blackjack tables were video blackjack. If I play, I prefer to touch the cards!!! Later we found out that there is no alcohol in the casino either - the county is totally dry!! Unbelievable!! We had hoped to see the play, Unto these Hills but it was raining and we didn't want to take a chance on buying tickets and have to sit out in the rain!! Our motel in Maggie's Valley was quaint. We had a hot tub in the room, so I had a nice soak before going to bed - even ate a piece of cheesecake with chocolate dribbled on it while in the tub! Talk about decadent!! We walked down to a sports bar after dinner and played some NTN Trivia. But, were we surprised when their "last call for drinks" was at 9:30!! The place closes at 10:00 (and it was Saturday night). We hurried back to our motel before they rolled up the sidewalks!! The next morning after a yummy pancake breakfast, we drove into Tennessee. We drove up to the Douglas Lake and just looked around. Then drove to Gatlinburg. We had never been there and don't know that we were missing anything!!! We had lunch at a nice English Pup restaurant and then hit the highway back to NC.