The man's side of it!

Last Friday on the 23rd, at the very last minute, my boss tells me he is shutting the shop down for the Christmas week. The work load is slow and There had been rumors floating around in the shop but nothing definite. I even asked the Office Manager if there was any truth to the rumors and was told no.
Anyway, So when I got home from work that day I told Cassie and we talked about what we would do. Cassie came up with the idea of taking a trip down to Tennessee to see my daughter and son-in-law and our grand kiddies. Hey that sounds great, I said. So we made some plans to go. We wanted to take the whole week to spend down there but we discovered that Heidi had to work Thursday through Saturday. So I said lets just go for three days. One day to drive down and one day to visit the family and one day to drive back. With the new Sienna van I figured I could make it easily. So off we went. Leaving Monday morning at 6AM I drove about 650 miles, 12 hours to Sevierville, Tennessee. We stopped for potty breaks and food whenever we needed them and made great time. I averaged about 80 miles an hour until we got off the exit on rt.81. The traffic in Sevierville and Pigeon Forge was bumper to bumper the whole way to our hotel.
We turned off rt.81 at 5:15 PM and didn't get to our hotel until 8:30 PM. WE stopped at the Ruby Tuesdays Restaurant for dinner (which took 45 minutes) and the rest of the time we sat in traffic. It took over 2 hours to travel about 15 miles. We later learned that there was a religious convention going on in Gatlinburg, TN. and that was the reason for all the traffic.

Our hotel suite was nice, we stayed at the Mainstay Hotel in Pigeon Forge, TN. Cassie and I were having a rough time sleeping there though. The bed was supposed to be a queen size but looked to be a full, and the pillows were very uncomfortable. But we made it through the night.

We had a wonderful time of fellowship with Michele, David and the grandkids. David took us on a little sightseeing trip so I could take some pictures. We sadly had to say our goodbyes and leave our Tennessee family and head back to our hotel to get some sleep for the long ride home. We left the hotel around 8:30 in the morning and had a great trip home. we didn't hit any traffic until we passed through Maryland. I missed my turn on Rt 295 and ended up in Collingswood, NJ where we came upon a scene right out of COPS! I locked our doors and had to wait about 15 minutes to get through the police roadblock at the tavern we passed. We made it home safe and sound and arrived about 8:30 PM.
We traveled over 1400 miles in the three days of our journey. When I arrived home I was pretty much wiped out. So it was off to bed for me.

I posted some pictures on my photoblog of the family and some scenery. Click on the thumbnail on the left side of the page to go there.

[composed and posted with ecto]