Gatlinburg

Next weekend Chase & I are heading to Gatlinburg for a trip with the family (his side). The last time I was there, I was a junior in high school on a forensics tournament (speech & drama, not dealing with crime scenes or dead bodies). I visited the magic store in the mall several times with my teammates as well as a trip to the restaurant Waldo Pepper's. Of course we went on the sky lift, tried to stop the giant ball from rolling on the water outside of Ripley's Believe it or Not (we were successful, but it started rolling again as soon as we let go), and did some general loitering on the streets as high schoolers often do.

The most exciting part of that trip was the Deer Farm Exotic Petting Zoo. It wasn't exciting because of the emus and peacocks, but more because our coach left us in Gatlinburg to fend for ourselves because she didn't think her car would make it down the hill to get to the zoo. Now, this was all the way back in 1999, but there were a couple people on the team who had cell phones that our coach never called. We waited... and waited... and waited... had someone call the police station to see if there had been any wrecks... there hadn't been any so we waited some more. Eventually, we decided it would be best for us to just head on back up to Ft. Mitchell, KY.

When a teammate dropped me off at home, I told my parents what had happened because I had to get my stuff which had been in the trunk of my coach's car. So I called her and she had been home for a couple hours! She proceeded to tell me how she didn't think her car would make it down the hill and just went on home. I went to her house, got my stuff, went back home, and the school had been notified about what had happened. Needless to say, there wasn't a forensics team the next year.

My family used to stop in Gatlinburg for a day or few on the way back from vacationing at Myrtle Beach. We would always go to the year-round haunted houses and make it a point to visit the haunted mansion. We'd also visit Ripley's Believe it or Not. I love that place, but I can't really say why. I know that the exhibits are fakes for the most part, and some even say how things were faked in the past (for example: "mermaid skeletons" were made on Japanese coasts by gluing the top half of a monkey to the bottom half of a fish and sold to American soldiers). But I just really like that place. It's fascinating to me.

I have a feeling that this trip is going to be very different from my past Gatlinburg trips. Maybe not different in a good or bad way, just different...