Our Smoky Mountain Vacation Part One

Sunday Jul. 5th.

We started the day by going to mass at the Mother House for the Dominican Order of nuns in Nashville. The house itself is beautiful...and huge. Apparently the entire house exists because of donations-the order don't run any fundraisers. The oldest section of the house predates the Civil War-in fact the residents were able to watch some of the battles right from the balcony. The rest of the house was built up over the years and it is now the size of a boarding school. Which is good, since the nuns live there most of the time, but they are a teaching order so many sisters are sent out to other cities for the school year.

The grounds were also beautiful, lots of flower arrangements, gardens, a volleyball court and a big statue of Jesus, which only makes sense. Tessa and I walked the grounds quite a bit during the mass. She was a little noisy and restless so I took her out just before it started. We were going to go back inside once mass began, but as soon as I opened the door she screamed "Hi!" at the top of her lungs and I went back outside, not out of embarrassment so much but because I was laughing too hard. So while we were walking around I took her to look at the Jesus statue which is a very good one by the way. Sometimes artists can really use their medium to bring life to their subject and whomever the artist was really did so. I told Tessa who we were looking at, and she said "Jechut." Close enough. She ran back to him before we went inside for a second look, and told him bye which I thought was just too cute.

When we finally went back inside, mostly because I was sweating severely due to the humidity from the previous night's storms, the homily was just about over, Valerie took Tessa with her for communion, so Tessa could look around and see everything and she seemed to enjoy it. The choir of nuns sounded really good but I did find it difficult to find my note and sing along with the hymns.

After mass we were able to visit for a while with Valerie's friend Karen, and she told us all about the house and her life as a teaching nun. We also snapped a picture of the girls together at Valerie's mother's request. Sister said it was okay as long as it didn't turn up anywhere weird on the Internet, so I'm not sure if this blog counts or not.

Anyway, after that it was back to the hotel to pack up and move on to Gatlinburg. The drive went pretty well, except for more rain. Tessa did fairly well, and once again enjoyed playing with the beach ball at our rest area stop.

We stayed at the Holiday Inn Club Vacation resort, which was called Crown Park Resort when we made our reservations. We had stayed there before and were impressed by the layout, particularly enjoying the mountain cabin look of the resort and condos. My fear was that Holiday Inn upon buying out the resort would gut it and make it look bland and predictable like every other hotel in the country. Fortunately this has not happened, at least not yet.

Upon our arrival we checked in and decided to get dinner. We chose a Texas Roadhouse right down the street from our condo because we knew what we would order and it seemed easier. However, we didn't really consider that by this time Tessa would be about ready for bed. As you can imagine , getting the child to sit and eat proved quite the task. eventually we gave up and just got our food in to go boxes to eat at the condo. Did I mention that it was raining heavily in Gatlinburg this whole time? Oh, and one of our umbrellas broke between the parking lot and the restaurant. Not exactly a great start, but we were there, fed and ready for the rest of the week.


Up next , shopping on Monday and Tessa's encounter with The Man himself.