Tennessee Weekend - Part IV
09-25-2002, 12:10 p.m.

Tennessee Weekend - Part IV...

September 25, 2002

We left gatlinburg after walking around a bit more and then we headed back to pigeon forge to find a room. We found one without too much fuss, it's funny how their signs say one thing, but when you go in they say a totally different thing, but we had fun looking around and picking where we wanted to stay. We found the place we evetually decided on and went to check in and then to put our stuff in the room. I wanted to change into some less tight shorts before we went horseback riding, hehe, so I did that and then we headed out for our horseback riding in the mountains excursion. We found the ranch without any trouble, it was such a beautiful drive, everything is so scenic there. We went in and paid for our tour and then had to fill out all these forms.. you know saying we wouldn't sue if we died, and stuff like that, snicker. Then we had to go watch a short video while we waited for them to get our horses ready. Tonya was a little nervous I think, but she did a good job at hiding it. Me, I was just so totally excited and couldn't wait to see my horse. As we waited, we of course checked out some of the cowboys. Mmmm, there were some real cuties, and the one that ended up being our guide was the cutest of all. Tonya kept saying that we found Cory's cowboy and how she couldn't wait to tell Cory. We were cracking up when we found out that we were going up the mountains alone with him, hehe. The guy who helped us on our horses was really really cute too, yum. He was teasing us because he had to make my stir ups really really short, and had to make Tonya's longer.. he said he gave us the wrong horse, lol. My horse's name was Louisiana, and Tonya's was Idaho, we joked about that too of course. I don't know, I think I did get the wrong horse.. only because my horse liked to walk right on the edge all the way up and down the mountain and that caused me a few moments of worry, lol. Our guide kept assuring me that the horse was going to go over the edge, but he couldn't assure me that I wouldn't, so that wasn't much of a reassurance. It was a really great time though, and half way up he stopped to take our cameras from us, so that he could take a few pictures of us. I was grateful for that. They had taken our picture as we left too, and when we got back I was able to buy those. The whole experience was just so wonderful, and I am so glad that we were able to do this. I will never forget the time we spent going up the mountain on horseback.. wonderful memories, that is for certain. Afterwards, we had some time before we had to get ready for our night out at the dixie stampede so we were going to hang out in Pigeon Forge for a while, but then it started raining a little, so we went back to the hotel instead. It was only drizzling, so we went swimming for a while, and had fun trying to break into the cool pool next door, but we couldn't figure our way in. Eventually we went back to the room, and just laid around and relaxed for a while. It was nice to have some down time. We had been doing so much fun stuff that it seemed like a whole day had already passed and yet we still had more stuff to do. I think I dozed off for a bit, but we mostly just watched TV, and enjoyed the quiet of the room until it was time to start getting ready for the evening.

We got up to take our showers, and we were laughing because it was raining outside harder, and we knew we would get wet going to the Dixie Stampede anyway, but we still wanted to attempt to look nice before we went. Luckily the rain stopped right before we were leaving, so it ended up being okay in the end anyway. We were both really looking forward to going to the Dixie Stampede, and we wanted to get there early for the pre-show, and to look at all the beautiful horses, so we headed out. It was just a few blocks down (one of the reasons we picked the hotel we did), so we went on down and spent some time looking around before the show. As we were getting ready to go into the show though, the told us no cameras were allowed.. the one bummer of the night.. that really stunk, hehe.. but we didn't care, we were too excited to let it get us down. It was time for the Dixie Stampeded...

(To Be Continued...)