{"id":897,"date":"2013-01-27T13:08:01","date_gmt":"2013-01-27T13:08:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.retired-openroad.us\/?p=897"},"modified":"2023-05-26T22:11:49","modified_gmt":"2023-05-26T22:11:49","slug":"a-side-trip-with-my-grandson-kyle-to-find-snow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.retired-openroad.us\/?p=897","title":{"rendered":"A side trip with my grandson Kyle to find snow"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’re currently in Picayune MS visiting my daughter and her family.\u00a0 I’ve promised each of the grandkids a trip for their 11th birthday and Kyle asked to see snow.\u00a0 A couple of weeks ago a large weather storm moved through our area, dumping LOTS of rain, and 4-8″ of snow was predicted for the Smoky Mountains<\/a>.\u00a0 Since they are pretty close to where we are and we could do a long weekend, Kyle and I boarded a plane and headed to Atlanta GA.\u00a0 From there we drove just a few hours up into the Smoky Mountains.<\/p>\n

Well, the weather forecasters were wrong!\u00a0 Such a small amount of snow fell that it was pretty much all gone by the time we go tthere.\u00a0 We did find a small patch along the road where we pulled over and Kyle got to feel it and make a small snowball.<\/p>\n

Just driving into the mountains was a new experience for Kyle – coming from the coastal part of Mississippi, he had never seen hills, let along mountains!\u00a0 He did a great job of navigating using my iPad map app, and he took several pictures of the mountains, some in the morning showed a lot of the misty smoke that gave the mountain area its name.<\/p>\n

We continued into the mountains to Cherokee<\/a>, NC which we knew was one of the higher points in the Smoky Mountains.\u00a0 Again, no snow.\u00a0 I wanted to head over the mountain pass on I-441 ending in Gatlinburg TN, but a rockslide had closed the pass so we headed east again.<\/p>\n

We found the Scaly Mountain Outdoor Center<\/a>\u00a0the next morning – just what we wanted!\u00a0 They blow snow onto a tubing run and have an outdoor ice skating rink.\u00a0 Kyle had a blast!!\u00a0 The lines for the tubing run were never more than 15 minutes long and were great fun – in his words “AWESOME”.\u00a0 He was a novice to ice skating, but within an hour was gliding around and doing spins!\u00a0 I posted a video of him ice skating on YouTube: http:\/\/youtu.be\/7kBOx3i8AGs<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 A 3-hour pass to do both activities was just $30.<\/p>\n

We found a motel by 3pm that day near Franklin NC\u00a0and the motel manager suggested we make a trip to the Fun Factory in Franklin.\u00a0 It was a great place to round out the trip.\u00a0 We bowled, played mini-golf, Kyle got to ride the go-carts and have fun in the laser-tag arena.\u00a0 There were also lots of video games.\u00a0 By the time we settled in for the night we were both pretty tired!<\/p>\n

The next day we headed back to Atlanta and flew home.\u00a0 What a great trip!\u00a0 Here are some pictures:<\/p>\n

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