SMOKIES

 I currently use a cricket phone but it is an android so I am able to use instagram as you can see in side bar the four pictures I have taken so far. However I have taken a bunch more but when it goes to post it, it takes me back to the home page and doesn't post the picture which has been aggravating me. I think it is because it's cricket service. Anyway in order to feel like I am instagraming lol I have tried to over edit some pictures from our trip this weekend in the smokies. 

I have been to the smokies a dozen times because it only takes 3 hours to get there from the little town of berea kentucky. So it makes a nice mini vacation. Here is the cabin my mom rented :)

The trip went by too fast but we enjoyed it. I love to take pictures but sometimes I wish I could just hand the camera to someone else and enjoy the surroundings without looking through a lens.

It was a little cold and rainy but that made some majestic views of the mountains!

Looks like a painting eh?

I haven't been to rock city since I was a little girl. I wanted to go so bad but there wasn't a lot of time.

Ok so I look a little out of it in this picture but these were some of the only ones I got someone else to take. We enjoyed a campfire and my sister's boyfriends brother who sang some old country tunes with his guitar.

lol it was actually drizzling a bit in this pic but the fire kept going so we just enjoyed it. You can see my favorite drink of choice below my feet. 

Look at the smoke rolling off the mountains! Beautiful! It was nice to not worry about anything and not have my art stuff around me that can stress me out at times. 

So last year me and Justin went to the smokies for the weekend by ourselves and it was horrid! We couldn't find a motel with vacancy which was my idea to just leave.. thinking that we would find a motel. We ended up staying in a one room... crap hole right down from gatlinburg's strip. Basically it all summed up to the fact that we now hate the strips so I wanted to go to these caverns down the road.

We walked in and they wanted almost 20 dollars a person... everyone looked at me like "Courtney you know were broke and if this sucks your in for it. So I was nervous but it ended up being the best part of the trip!

Our guide was a young guy who took this picture for me. He was very nice and said he was actually going to go to the university of the Cumberlands here in Kentucky for college.

I really enjoyed the cavens because it was a lot of climbing and almost crawling.

All of us sitting in the main room of the cavern. I tried to take good pictures but my camera wasn't cooperating with all the changing tones of light.

Reminds me of one of my favorite movies... Journey tho the center of the earth! (the old version)

My little sister and her boyfriend Cody.

Everywhere there was light in the cave there were patches of fresh green growth... so cute!

Tennessee is such a wild state these cute ducks were in the gas station parking lot!

The one shop I like on the strip is a shop called Earthbound. A lot of their items are made from recycled materials like these letters made from rolled up magazine pages. 

All of these pictures were taken in their shop! Kind of inspiration for me :)

I took several pictures of these two wearing different hats. This is the one I got on my camera the other is on instagram which I hope with work for me soon.

I loved this table. I wish I had the materials and tools to make it they wanted 400 for it on sale!

Overall the trip was worth it... even if it broke our bank and our savings!

Have you been to the smokies? Whats your favorite site to see there? Do you have a vacation spot close to home? I would love to hear about it!