Gatlinburg Girls Getaway - Part One

This past weekend was one I had been looking forward to for a while. A couple of months ago, my cousin Jan and I were talking about Gatlinburg and she suggested we have a girls weekend. I said, let's do it! She said she would book the condo and I could get the list of girls together. I gave her a couple of weekends to check on - she and her husband (my cousin Benny) own a  condo that they rent out - so I gave her a couple of weekends to choose from so we could make sure the condo was available. The weekend that ended up being available was October 3-5 and so I put a great group of girls together and off we went to the mountains. 

There were six of us in total (me, Jan, Leah, Christy, Amber and Katie) and all of us but Katie left from Huntsville on Friday morning a little after 9:00 a.m. Katie lives in Murphreesboro, TN now and she teaches school. So, she came up after school was out that afternoon. 

Our first stop was in South Pittsburgh at the Lodge factory outlet. I had printed directions off the internet but they were not very clear and so, after taking a long scenic route through Kimball and Jasper, Tennessee, we turned around and Leah got us to where we needed to be. We did some shopping, made some purchases, and then perused an antique store.We left South Pittsburgh and our next stop was the Chattanooga Brewing Company. Jan, Amber, and Leah were in the lead car and had looked up restaurants on Trip Adviser and the brewery had good reviews. The food was, in fact, delicious. Jan and I had burgers and the other girls had sandwiches with sweet potato waffle fries which were delicious. If you are ever in Chattanooga, it's a great place to eat. 

After lunch, we headed east and made one more stop for gas before making our final exit off the interstate. The traffic into Gatlinburg was thick, but really not too bad. It moved at a steady pace and we arrived at the condo some time after 5:00 p.m. We all got settled in and dropped our bags in our respective rooms and sat around and talked until Katie arrived. She got to Gatlinburg around 8:00 p.m. and we met her downstairs and headed to downtown Gatlinburg. Everything was in walking distance from the condo which was super convenient. 

We made our way to a Mexican restaurant and shared some appetizers and enjoyed watching drunk people attempt to ride the donkey, which was kind of like a mechanical bull but bigger and weirder. It was funny nonetheless because no one could stay on. When we finished eating, we walked around town and perused some of the shops before heading back to the condo. 

Once back at the condo we stayed up late talking, sharing stories and giggling like school girls. It reminded me of sleepovers from when I was a kid. I think we finally went to bed around midnight so that we could get some rest before the next day of fun.