We went to the mountains again in September, this time on the Tennessee side. We did have to stop on the way, but it turns out highway rest stops are not bad - you don't have to touch anything at all. I saw one unmasked teenager hanging out in the bathroom (WHY) but on the whole they were pretty sparsely populated and everyone there followed the rules.
It was raining when we arrived and the first day was misty and foggy. Those are some smoky mountains!
We decided to go after Becca told me she'd rented a cabin near Pigeon Forge. We had just gotten back from the mountains but could already tell we were going to need regular breaks from the house, so we decided to crash their family vacation. I found a cabin in the same neighborhood, and we all quarantined for two weeks beforehand so we could hang out.
This trip was the best thing about 2020, hands down. We would never have even thought to try to go on a Tennessee vacation with the Mathiesens if there weren't a pandemic, but I'm so, so glad we did, and I feel like we're going to make it more of a priority to see our friends in a post-pandemic world. I hope so, anyway. It was great to spend some time getting to know their kids, wandering around in nature, cooking dinner together and drinking wine on the deck every night.
We went for easy walks and hikes every day, a nice break from the grueling situations Ben gets me into when we're alone. We walked up this big ramp to Clingman's Dome, the highest point in the Smokies.
We also got to have our weekly Zoom call in person! The five of us have been meeting on Zoom every Saturday since March - certainly the most frequently we've ever been in touch since high school. It's usually the highlight of my week, and was awesome to be able to do it together in our St Joe SMARTS t-shirts.
The Smokies are beautiful, of course, and the easy pace meant we got to really appreciate it rather than getting sweaty and tired (can you tell I don't love hiking).
We also went into a little general store and got some fried pies and ice cream. This was the first grocery store I'd been in since March. I didn't love it but the patrons were all masked up, kind of surprising for Trump country.
We didn't see many people on some of the hikes but this one on the last day was pretty populated.
We got to walk behind a waterfall!
This was the scariest place, some kind of roadside attraction with goats. We got out to see the goats, but overall it felt quite bad with lots of red staters wandering without masks. All those flags say TRUMP on them, if you can't tell - a curious situation we're in, where retailers decorate their establishments with presidential propaganda that ends up feeling threatening somehow. We did not stay here long.
Overall, it was an awesome five days. Hard to believe it's been 25 years since the three of us graduated from Central High in St Joe, MO.
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