Onto our next stop in Townsend, Tennessee where we are looking forward to being two of the town’s 496 residents! Our Airbnb is located in a gated community on a golf course, tucked away in the woods on the border of the Smoky Mountains. Townsend has a small-town feel with one small grocery store and a couple of restaurants. We’ve been enjoying the back deck of the house overlooking the 14th hole and I’ve particularly enjoyed sitting outside in the morning with coffee (or wine, loosely depending on the time of day) watching the birds and hawks and looking for other wildlife (including the neighbor’s 200lb Newfoundland, Chewy, who we momentarily mistook for a bear). In our first week, we tried to spend some time relaxing and winding down to match the speed of our surroundings.
We made our first visit to Smoky Mountain National park for a short, unexciting hike and beautiful drive through Caves Cove, where we saw a mama bear and cubs (from very far away).
We got to visit Dollywood mid-week! After a long wait in line, Don and I rode our first-ever rollercoaster together, FireChaser Express (after 8 years together, we are running out of “firsts”). Though we quickly realized that we cannot handle rollercoasters the way we used to as kids, we picked a couple of smaller rollercoasters and also rode the Dollywood coal-fire train “Klondike Katie” from WW2. The park was fun, but busy and HOT (90+ degrees) and unfortunately, we had no Dolly Parton sightings.
This week we also spoke to a realtor to officially start our house hunt in Milwaukee! This was an exciting step but led to the sad realization that our summer adventure is almost over.
Maeby is happy to have a front row seat to watch squirrels, bunnies, and other animals race through the yard. She also had to learn how to use stairs regularly, as she’s only used them a few times sporadically in her life!
