Just for the record, I seriously have some of the best friends in the world. Because of graduate school and post-college life, my group of friends and I had been split up and tossed all over the place, too busy to connect as frequently as we would have liked. Since we have all pretty much graduated, have adult jobs and live relatively close to each other, we decided we wanted to start an annual tradition of going on a trip together over Labor Day weekend. Therefore, for our first trip, we started somewhere semi-close and went to Gatlinburg for the long weekend. It was such an amazing time with the ladies who know me best. We went hiking, drank wine, celebrated new jobs with cupcakes, swam, and just caught up on life.
We arrived on Friday night semi-late, as we left Central Kentucky at around 4:30 pm. We stopped at Cracker Barrel on our way down, and had a big family dinner to kick the weekend off right. We arrived in Gatlinburg that evening, and celebrated Jesse and Rebecca's new jobs with champagne and cupcakes. We stayed up pretty late laughing and enjoying each other's company.
On Saturday, we (or maybe I) decided to do a 5 mile hike to Abram's Falls which is located within the Cades Cove loop. We took a picnic lunch, and downed some sandwiches, chips, fruit, and fresh salsa before starting the hike. We hiked for a about an hour and a half before reaching an absolutely gorgeous waterfall. We explored the waterfall, waded through the freezing cold water, and just relaxed a bit before hiking back to the car. Once we arrived back to town, we were starving and decided to eat at Mellow Mushroom. We pigged out on salads, pretzels, calzones, and pizzas. After dinner, we went back to the condo and enjoyed the two indoor hot tubs for a while, letting our muscles recover from a long day of being in the woods.
Here are some pictures from our hike.
 |
| Crossing a pretty creek on the trail |
 |
| Love my Dana. |
 |
| Abram's Falls. |
 |
| Playing in the freezing cold water. |
 |
| I forged the river to the other side. |
 |
| Enjoying the pretty Smoky Mountains. |
 |
| Getting closer so we could take a good picture. |
 |
| Enjoying some snacks before we headed back to the car. |
On Saturday, it was supposed to rain, so we decided to head to the Outlets. We shopped for a few hours and each of us found some great deals. Banana Republic was having a 50% off sale, so unfortunately most of my money went to buy a stupid suit for work. But at least I saved a ton of money. After the outlets, we went to the Smokey Mountain Brewery for drinks and dinner. We tried a lot of the beers, and enjoyed some fantastic burgers. After dinner, we walked around Gatlinburg. We explored Moonshine Holler, where SMokey Mountain Moonshine is located. There was a good bluegrass band that we watched for a while. We also decided we wanted to make some airbrush shirts because, I mean, who can go to Gatlinburg and not come back with a tacky airbrushed t-shirt to commemorate the experience? Am I right? So we also did that which was quite the adventure in itself.
Here are are some pictures from Saturday.
 |
| Dinner at Smokey Mountain Brewery. |
 |
| Tasting some yummy beer. |
 |
| Moonshine Holler. |
 |
| Rocking chairs and a bluegrass band. What a fun night. |
 |
| They were really fun to watch. |
 |
| Love this girl. |
 |
| Rebecca, Blair, Dana, and Wellis. |
 |
| We weren't the only ones enjoying the band. |
 |
| Our fantastic airbrush shirts that we spent entirely too much money on, but that are completely awesome. |
And that was our weekend. It was incredibly fun. I'm excited to start planning for next year!
