Mountain Madness 2014: Walking Through Fields & Forests...

The last (full) day of the Easter mountain weekend - delightful! Also, ten points to anyone who can tell me where I got the title for this post from! Just kidding, I'm pretty sure no one will have any clue where that came from...and that's fine. Ha-ha! Easter 2014 was spent in the best way possible - in nature!

Look at my delightful Easter "basket" - I love it! 

Stuffed to the brim; the Easter bunny is always so good to both me & my little sis!

We slept in on Sunday, which is always perfectly glorious and of course then I had a splendidly stuffed Easter basket to open! I'm fairly certain I'll be eating Easter candy for at least another month due to all of the chocolate, jelly beans and other goodies that were mixed in with my non-edible things! After a quick jaunt through Kroger to buy picnic supplies, we made a quick stop at the Alpine Coaster so Jeffrey and Ginger could take a quick spin down the mountain before heading into Cade's Cove for the day. Since they are more thrill seeking than I, I just let them cruise down the mountain on the coasters; I'd already conquered my fear of heights and that was enough for one weekend.

Aren't they so sweet? I have the most delightful parents.

She just was tall enough to ride on her own - what a hoot!

Ready to be pulled up the mountain so they could zip back down!

I think I captured a pretty magical shot - an Easter miracle if you will...

On the floor of the church - so pretty.

I guess our picnic lunch wore Mom out...& Dad's grin is the best, ha-ha!

The hills are alive...oh wait, that's somewhere else...right?

Taking a break against a tree - good resting spots were readily available all along the 2.5 miles of trail.

I promise, we hiked a lot - but the best time for pictures was when you stopped to sit.

It was SO warm on Sunday; I am not even joking when I say I wanted to jump in Abrams Creek.

Abrams Creek!

At the apex of the trail, about 1.25 miles in, we crested the "top" of the ridge & could see into the valley below.

This was the first time in all my hikes in the Smokies that when I heard a rustle in the brush, it was a SNAKE. Gross.

Abrams Falls! Totally worth the 5 mile roundtrip hike!

A nice woman took my picture for me since I was the only one of us to venture so close to the falls...

"Family" photo...just missing one Beast!

Retreating back into the forest and away from the falls...

Once we made it back to the car (hallelujah for water) and finished the drive through Cade's Cove, we stopped and got some absolutely delicious ice cream at the Camp Store before heading back to the resort to change. We had supper at the Apple Barn, which is one of our favorite places to eat in the Smokies and ended the night with a light round of golf...goofy golf that is. I played well but there was no beating "Deuces"; my Dad seemed to make every hole in just 2 shots! He also got a hole in one but fear not, I made sure to get myself a hole in one as well - on the very last hole! Sadly, my Mom's usually fine golf form was absent on Sunday night but we all had a good time.

One of the surest signs that you are to have some delicious food!

Deuces shows off his fine form - that's game winning form I'll have you know!

Ginger has good form too - although it didn't seem to help too much with this outing.

The face of determination...concentration...

The sky turned almost cotton candy pink as the sun set - it was gorgeous!

Doing the hole in one dance - way to go!

You had to hit the ball & whichever lane it went down, that was what you scored. Mine headed towards lane 3...but veered and hello, hole in one! 

We thought this was dirt but once we realized it wouldn't wash off, we ascertained it was from zip-lining...harder than it looks!

Well - that was pretty much the end of all things. We chatted some back at the room once we'd all gotten packed up...oh, well, I guess I could tell the story of the disastrous bath that I tried to take on Sunday night. I had big plans to take a nice warm bath in the hot tub in my room because between the zip-lining and the hiking five miles, I was feeling a little ragged. I filled up the tub and got in, pushing the button to turn on the jets...which immediately shot out ice cold water! I jerked upwards to cut them off and in the process hit the button that cuts on the the shower with my foot...which caused cold water to start raining down on me. I managed to hastily slap that off and looked around the bathroom to see that the floor was covered in water and I was in a state after all that jerking around...so I just gave up, washed up, drained the tub and went on about my business. *Sigh* The best laid plans and all that...

We ate at Pancake Pantry on Monday morning but I'll touch on that in my weekly wrap up post, so for now...that's all she wrote. Here endeth the posts on the weekend vacation!