Spring Break, Day 4

By Tuesday we were ready to get out of the camp area for a bit. We ended up driving to Ober Gatlinburg for the day. Before leaving home I'd looked up things to do and I saw that they had an alpine slide, something I thought would be fun for everyone. Ages 3 and up could ride so it worked out perfectly for us. There are lots of things to do there but this was top of the list for us. They also have an alpine coaster, but unfortunately it was closed the day we were there. If we ever go back we'll definitely go do that.

To get to the alpine slide you have to ride up on the chair lift, a slightly scary experience when riding up with little kids. I was so worried about one of them slipping out under the bar that I was quite tense the whole ride up and was happy when we were able to get off.

Harper and I did the ride up the mountain together while Tony, Landon and Dakota rode up. Mom opted out of the first trip.

The line for the alpine slide was a little long, we probably waited about 30 minutes once we got to the top. It wasn't terrible but the kids were really getting anxious so I was glad when it was finally our turn.

We forgot our GoPro and none of us were able to hold a camera and ride down at the same time so there's no footage of our actual trip down the slide, but it was a blast! Harper isn't as adventurous as Dakota when it comes to stuff like this so he and I went down rather slowly. I think we had three other people pass us on the way down. Every time I'd speed up he'd yell for me to slow down, so we took it easy. Poor Landon got behind Harper and I and he was a little upset that he'd had to hit the brakes on the way down. I guess we were holding up our line pretty bad...oops!

At the bottom of the slide they had a couple kiddie rides and a small playground which the little kids enjoyed.

I asked mom if she wanted to ride up the chair lift with us again, this time to the top of the mountain and she agreed. It was quite a long ride up and it was scary looking down, so I focused my attention on keeping Dakota from slipping out while she waved at every single person that passed us on their way down. She'd wave and then give each person a thumbs up, it was pretty cute.

For some reason I felt like the ride back down the mountain wasn't as scary. I think I was the only one who felt that way but I was much more relaxed. Dakota, on the other hand, was more nervous and held onto the bar with both hands for much of the way down...unless she was busy waving at the people going up. :) 

That's my mom and Landon in the picture below...

We did a little shopping once we were on the ground again and got a snack as well.

Then we went to the "wildlife encounter" which was AWFUL! I actually wrote a short review about how bad it was on Trip Advisor and noticed other's felt the same way. The enclosures looked dirty and poorly maintained. There was a single bear with nothing but concrete to walk on and the water in it's exhibit looked dirty. The birds had nowhere to fly or hardly move and the otter exhibit was just sad. I took several pictures but some of them are just sad looking so I'm not going to share those. I'm just going to post some of the okay ones...

We were pretty exhausted after all the walking that day and we had a 1 1/2 hour ride back to our campsite so we headed out after the animal thing. I hope that one day we'll be able to go back to Ober Gatlinburg because there were lots of other things to do that we didn't have time for. I just hope that wildlife thing is gone when I get there.