You Take the Good, You Take the Bad

We left town a little early on Friday in order to beat the traffic, which we did. Until we got to Gatlinburg, TN and then screeeechhhh....dead stop. I tried to find a picture of the traffic online but couldn't find anything that would do it justice. We could have bypassed it altogether, but Mr. Daddy had gotten a good deal on a hotel in Gatlinburg, so we couldn't go around it -- we had to go THROUGH it.

And about that hotel. Hotels.com? Your "reviewers"? Were obviously out smoking crack and NOT reviewing this room because it was nothing like your description. I mean, it wasn't disgusting, but it wasn't great either. Let's just say the carpet was "damp" and leave it at that.

When we woke up Saturday morning Mr. Daddy pulled back the curtain to greet the day and was greeted with rain. Not just a little summer shower, but real rain. Not to be deterred we hopped in the car and headed to Pigeon Forge. The Weather Channel had assured us the rain was isolated.

After gorging ourselves on a delicious IHOP breakfast (blueberry pancakes = YUM!), we headed over to Dollywood -- in the rain.

We rode the trolley from the parking lot -- in the rain.

We ran to the gates -- in the rain.

We stood around in the gift shop (which in a brilliant marketing scheme you MUST enter and exit through) and watched the rain pour down in buckets. We watched braver souls head out into the park, immediately getting soaked. We had one umbrella between us and Mr. Daddy had thus far martyred himself to the cause of Mommy and children staying dry -- though even that was a dubious achievement because it's terribly difficult for anyone to stay dry when three people are trying to share one small umbrella, with a toddler fighting for control of the handle and one kid hanging on the mom's leg. Yeah.

So, we splurged on another umbrella. And we stood around some more. Still raining. Then we splurged on a poncho for Bubba. And we stood around some more. Finally, when the rain slowed to a heavy drizzle instead of a downpour, we, too, headed out.

By the time we walked to the children's section the rain had almost stopped. The carousel was covered so we headed there first.


When we emerged from the Carousel the rain had stopped and we proceeded to visit all the rides in the kids' section and dry all the seats on all the rides with our butts.

At one point I asked Mr. Daddy to please take a photo of me with the kids so that I could prove I was actually there, too, but somehow I only appear in the photo below of me and Bubba on the bumper cars.


After paying $35 for hamburgers and fries for 4 people -- 2 of whom are under the age of 6 -- we rode a few more rides. By this time the sun was out and the humidity was about 1000%. I began to see the signs of imminent meltdown in Punkin and we decided it was time to head home. There are only a handful of rides there that she can ride -- most of them require you to be at least 42" tall -- and she had ridden them all several times. So we headed out of the park.

Now some of you may be wondering "What happened with the funnel cake?" Good question. First, we need to note that none of the funnel cake stands opened up until well after lunchtime. WTH? They were frying sausages and onions at 9:45 in the morning, but no funnel cake. It's practically like pancakes for pete's sake. What's the deal?

As we neared the exit, I realized that the funnel cake stand was finally open. "Hold up" I said to Mr. Daddy. "I need to get a funnel cake."

"Do you have any cash?" he asked.

"No. What happened to all the money?"

"Well, lunch happened. And an umbrella. And a poncho. And a popgun. Wait, I've got three dollars."

"Oh, I've got one here in my pocket. And I just remembered I have a dollar in my wallet. What's that? Five dollars? How much are they?"

$5.50. Five dollars and fifty cents. I was FIFTY CENTS short.

I sighed my patented martyred sigh and we headed for the exit.

Punkin fell asleep literally before we drove out of the parking lot. Bubba got his long coveted popgun. A (mostly) good time was had by all.