Ahhh!

Alright! I am done with one class. I finally finished my case study which, if I hadn't of waited until the last minute, would have been pretty easy. But what's the fun in that? Instead, I did wait until the last minute as I am apt to do and just finished it, 2 1/2 hrs before the deadline. That's what deadlines are for, right? Motivation! I almost talked myself into running off and taking the kids to a corn maze. Thankfully I didn't because I never would have finished in time.

Anyway, I thought I would share some of the pics from our little Labor Day weekend trip to the Smokey Mountains. The afternoon we arrived was sunny. But after that, it was pretty gloomy. Sprinkling rain on Sunday and thunderstorms on our ride home. So the mountains were particularly smoky that weekend. (You know it's the rain and evaporation that causes the smokiness, right?)

We mainly went down there because Bobby wanted to ride on the Dragon's tail. An 11 mile strip with 318 curves. Oh, and did I mention, the mountain? I'm sure he was paying attention to the road, which left it up to me to check out the drop offs right next to that white line.

You probably can't really make out the sign for the switchback there, because uh, we were moving towards it when I snapped the pic. Let's just say, it was a hairpin turn, and there were plenty where that came from.

I don't think there was one straight stretch along the entire road. I was okay when we first started, thinking "I trust my husband. I mean he has been riding a motorcycle for the 16 years I've known him, and then some, and surely he wouldn't put the mother of his 5 children at risk, but whoa he's really close to the white line, and ahhhh, the mountain just drops off next to me. Would the trees break my fall or would I just roll all the way down, and if I did, how would they find me?" Yeah, I was okay at first, the first mile at least, maybe.

When you get to the end (the beginning?) you end up here. Deal's Gap, NC.

Home to this place and not much else.

They have this tree there, at the end. Which is a good thing. It pays homage to all those who have wrecked before us and those who did not survive.

I'm glad I didn't check it out until after we made the trip. Unfortunately, the fastest way back to where we were going, was the way we came.

Did I mention, it was raining? And we were riding a motorcycle?

I thought this guy was cool. If you click to make it bigger, you'll see he has an orange Mohawk on his helmet. I thought the kids would get a kick out of that. And see the girl on the back of that bike in front? Totally not comfortable unless you are a skinny little thing like her. No, probably not even then. Not to mention the cracking of helmets every time you stop or shift because there is no way to lean back. Oh, and the wind! The person on the back gets all the wind. Not pleasant.

We were not on a crotch rocket like that. Bobby took his cruiser down there, of which I have no pictures. Because uh, it was raining, and my hair was a hot mess.

After surviving the Dragon, we took a leisurely drive through Cades Cove.

I wouldn't recommend it, on the back of a motorcycle, on a holiday weekend. There were a lot of stops and starts, and fumes.

I thought the cemeteries were the most interesting, but then, aren't they always?

Check out this guy. I just thought that was funny. I can't say I have ever seen the mechanism of death listed on the gravestone. But I think someone was a little bitter. Russell was murdered by them dag blamed North Carolina Rebels.

There was another little section that seemed to have nothing but babies buried in it. Kind of sad. One family lost four daughters. One at age 2, twins at birth 1 year later, and another at birth 2 years after that. I can't imagine how hard it was, even if losing children was not uncommon back then.

It was pretty, and pretty congested. It took us several hours to get through it. Cuz someone saw a bear, maybe, and that causes traffic to stop, and uh, there's no passing lanes there. And gosh forbid people actually follow the signs and pull off to the side to avoid stopping in the middle of the road.

Yeah, this last one is a little blurry. I was a bit tired of the stop and go traffic, and since traffic was moving at this point, I didn't dare make Bobby stop to take a picture.

We drove back on Monday, through a couple thunderstorms, which was no fun, on the back of a motorcycle. We had to wait it out under a couple overpasses, which if you've never been to Kentucky, let me tell you, are few and far between. Needless to say, we were soggy and sore by the time we got home.

And now I'm going to bed. For some goofy reason, I picked up a day shift tomorrow.

Speaking of work, although not really since I'm not allowed to mention my work on the Internet. So let's just say, if I worked in a hospital and if I was a labor and delivery nurse, I might have worked on the anomaly that was 9/9/9 and we might have had 9 deliveries. Kooky, huh?