Little Road Trip to the Smoky Mountains National Park

Yay it’s Friday Story Time by Lia again and mommy, ma, pop and I just got home from our little road trip to the Smoky Mountains National Park! It was so awesome to see the Elk up close and so much more! If you missed ma’s Wordless Wednesday, she posted some pictures of our trip. Ma use to call our little road trips get-away trips, but now she calls them sneak-away trips! We sneak away in the middle of the night and no one sees us leave! LOL http://themarthareview.com/great-smoky-sneak-away/

Our trip started Sunday, leaving about 4:30am and arriving at the hotel in Cherokee, NC about 11:00am. I fell asleep along the way up for about 3 hours so it seemed like a short trip! The fun time for Sunday was going to the arcade at the hotel! Of course after a six hour ride I had to freshen up a bit then off to the arcade we went!

There are so many cool arcade games, mommy and I love to play air hockey and skee ball! But my favorite is driving a race car! One of the races I crashed my car and came in 6th place but two times I came in 2nd place!

I also entered a motorcycle road race! I was swerving from right to left and I only crashed once. I came in 16th but mommy said I did great for the first time. NOTE FROM MA: I couldn’t even watch Lia go around the car or motorcycle track because it made me so dizzy just watching! LOL I don’t know how she stayed so perfect on the tracks!

The next morning we got up very early and headed on a drive through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It’s one long winding road throught the mountains from Cherokee, North Carolina to Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

Near the Cherokee end of the park there is a large open field where the Elk graze. We were lucky enough to be there right during breakfast feeding time! I grabbed my camera and took these pictures! I was looking out the sunroof of the car and had a great view!

Look at the pictures and video ma took of the Elk! One walked right in front of our car! He was huge!!

We even saw wild turkeys running around with the Elk! The turkey look both ways before he crossed the road!

While Pop was driving the mountain road, I looked out the window and all I saw was mountains! We were almost up to the sky!

When we got to the road going to Cade’s Cove, we stopped at the Sugarlands Valley Nature Trail. The National Forest Park Rangers were there to answer any questions people had. There was also a small nature museum and I got to see some animals! Of course the first display I visited were butterflies! Look at the huge snake! Owls are my favorite too so I was sure to stop by and read about the owls. After checking out the museum, we continued up a long winding road to Cade’s Cove.

I’m not a Junior Ranger in the National Park Program yet but I got a stamp for the Great Smoky National Park and the Junior Ranger stamp! I am a member of the South Carolina National Parks so we will be visiting many more of those soon!

This is a place way off the road where we saw more deer and turkeys! I was hoping to see some bears but they weren’t out when we drove around the 11 mile loop where you can view nature, wildlife and old buildings!. Ma did get some pictures and a video of the deer taking a slow walk in the field. https://www.mypigeonforge.com/smoky-mountains/cades-cove

It took about 3 hours to drive up and visit everything and when it was ready to head back to Cherokee, I was so sleepy! It was time to get a little shut-eye, I slept almost the entire 3 hour drive back to the hotel!

Our trip was so much fun but it was time to pack and head back home. I had so much fun seeing all the Elk and hopefully we can see the bears next time we take a little road to the Smoky Mountains National Park!

Thanks for visiting my Friday Story Time by Lia and do you know what next Friday is? It’s APRIL 1st, the first day of the April Ultimate Blog Challenge and Ma and I are ready to join in!