Tennessee Weekend - Part I
08-26-2002, 8:46 p.m.

Tennessee Weekend - Part I...

August 26, 2002

As I wrote that morning, I woke up pretty early, and got ready to leave. I took my time, since I had plenty of it, but eventually it was time to go. It was raining and icky, and I just hoped that it would not affect my flight. Stephen drove me to the airport, and since he had to get to work early that worked out well for him. He just dropped me off, which was all I wanted him to do anyway. I went in, and checked in. I decided that I was going to carry on my bags so that we didn't have to wait for them in Nashville. I was glad that I did, because it went very smoothly. I stopped and grabbed a cappuchino and made my way to the terminal. I didn't have to wait very long before they started loading the plane, so it was really nice and worked out well.

I sat next to an older gentleman, and once the flight was getting ready to take off, I think he could tell that I was a little nervous, so he sat and talked to me, and told me of his time serving his country and how he got shot.. and all about his children and anything else he could think of. He was 70 years old and had many stories and before I knew it we were landing in Nashville. It went by so quickly talking with him, he was a very nice guy.. as was the guy sitting behind me. As soon as he saw me coming, he got up to help me put my luggage in the overhead compartment, and then he got it down for me once we got to Nashville. It was a very pleasant trip. I was one of the first ones off the plane, I was so excited. I don't think that I could have walked any more quickly down the hallway.. but I was anxious to see Tonya.

She was there waiting for me (with a pretty orange rose.. I don't think I ever saw and orange rose before, hehe.. it was beautiufl). We made our way to her van, which was pretty close, and then we were on our way. We were both excited and we just kept talking about everything, and the ride to Knoxville went very quickly. We were both starving, and she was so excited about where we were going to eat, but she still wouldn't tell me where it was.. and I honestly had not a clue. All I knew was that it must be cool because she was so excited, and cool it was.

I never expected that we were going to one of our favorite restaurants, PF Changs, because I didn't know that they even had one in Knoxville, but it was a brand new one, that she had recently found out was there, and I was so excited once we got there. We took a few pictures outside by the statues (one of our favorite things about this place), and then ran in to wait for our table.. We talked about lettuce wraps the whole time, and there was not a doubt that it was what we were getting. We also got an order of mongolian beef to share (another of our favorites from there), and it was just a wonderful lunch. I enjoyed it so very much, it was a good start to this trip. After lunch, it was time for ice cream at the marble slab, something that I had been looking forward to for a long time. I got an ice cream with all the works (sweet cream ice cream with Cherries, coconut and chocolate chips in a waffle cone dipped in chocolate and heath bars).. oh yum, it was just totally to die for and as we sat outside eating our ice cream, I was in heaven, hehe. It really was wonderful.. but by the time I was done I couldn't have eaten another bite... I don't regret it though.. it was totally great. We sat for a little bit and talked, but we were both anxious to get to Gatlinburg and see our room, and all that fun stuff. Tonya decided to take a way which would take us past Neyland Stadium where the Vols play and I was so excited about that. I got so excited to see it and it made me realize just how much I would love to go to a game someday. It really is something that I know that I am going to make an effort to do one of these days, it would just be so cool. Just seeing the stadium gave me goosebumps. The whole ride was fun, because we got more and more excited the closer we got to gatlinburg. We stopped for gas in Pigeon Forge, and we took our time driving thru there, just looking at everything (well Tonya, letting me look at everything), and finally we made it to Gatlinburg.. it was beautiful and wonderful, and I am so glad that this is where we picked to stay.

We checked into our hotel and went to check out our room. The view from the balcony was so beautiful and I could have sat there forever looking at it, but we decided to take showers and get ready to go out and shop some of the stores and some other stuff. Actually, I filled the whirlpool tub up with tons of bubbles and relaxed in there for a little bit first.





Hey, we paid for it, so we had to take advantage of it, right. Tonny was doing some other stuff, and then when I was done she took a shower. We got dressed, and ready to go. I think that we would have loved to have done a lot more at the hotel, but we were really excited about getting out and about as well. We didn't really have much time to do all the things that we would have loved to do, so we really tried to take advantage of the time that we did have. We took some pictures at the hotel before we left, as we were trying to make sure that we had tons of pictures. We were not sure exactly what we were going to go do, we wanted to play it by ear, but we were both sure that whatever we ended up doing, it would be fun. We had some ideas, but nothing written in stone, so we headed out and headed towards pigeon forge, as we knew that we wanted our first stop to be the Christmas place. We both really wanted to go there, so it was a perfect choice for our first destination...

To be continued...