Vacation Pt 1

We're back, after a week away on a glorious, peaceful vacation! For the past 7 days, we've been traveling, relaxing, hiking, and seeing the sights in the Great Smoky Mountains and Gatlinburg, TN. We had a wonderful time, and are happy to report that we had very few problems with traveling toddler-style. Because we also traveled to the same location last year, we also have a good sense of the differences between vacationing with an infant vs. a toddler.

With so many thoughts to share, and so many great pictures and bits of advice, it seems only best to break up our vacation-related thoughts into different posts. Consider this post, then, to be mere introduction to our adventure.

We decided to travel to Gatlinburg for 4 main reasons: 1) we had been there before, enjoyed it and wanted to see more of it; 2) the driving time is manageable; 3) we could find an affordable cabins; 4) we love visiting national parks.

We also thought the location would offer toddler-friendly attractions, but this wasn't one of primary criteria, because we have a firm belief that you can find something fun for a toddler almost anywhere if you think about it creatively. It was more important that we stayed somewhere that would make all of us happy, and that H could have a chance to experience something new and different. Now 21 months old, he's at a stage in which he picks up on words, concepts, and experiences very quickly - and by going to the mountains he had a chance to experience a very different kind of natural environment than the one we live in here in the Midwest.

Among the words and concepts he learned (and loved) from this trip:
-Mountains
-Cabin
-Streams [and] Rivers - and the sounds they make
-Tunnels - he'd say "more" every time we left one
-Hiking - perhaps his favorite new pastime
-Fallen trees - every time we saw one while hiking, he'd say 'uh oh'
-The sounds bugs make in the forest at night
-"Pace" - as in keeping a good pace with hiking
-Bluegrass - one of his favorite new forms of music
-"Cheers" - clinking glasses/sippy cups in celebration of a good day

And we learned that our son is mesmerized by nature, could sit in front of a stream all day, finds bugs fascinating, and can hike much further than we ever imagined. We also learned that while we are getting better than ever at planning for trips like this, we can still forget certain important travel components (like his carrier, oops!), but more on that in another post.

For now, here are just a few of the pictures from our vacation.