The First Taste Of Some Golden Tennessee Summer Sun

Hi, friends! Welcome back to another blog post.

Today was a really good one – very busy, though!

We were up and out the door pretty early this morning because we were planning to head out into the Smokies again today. It was warm and sunny, so the weather was perfect for a lil' mountain outing!

Last time we visited the Smokies, two weeks ago or so, we checked out the Sugarlands trail. But on today's outing, Josh took us to the Chimneys, which was really fun.

While in the Chimneys, we ended up doing this, like, little hike through a bear habitat (we actually saw two bears on our way up to to the park!) and also did some – I guess you could say – rock climbing (?) in the river, for a lack of better words, which was a ton of fun. Both Raleigh and the kiddo got pretty brave – and gave the rocks a go!

And then after the Chimneys, we made our way onto Pigeon Forge to do a little bit of shopping. Even though we had no intention of drinking whatsoever, we found this little winery doing tastings there – and we only stopped because they had this wine I have been looking for for, like, months at this point.

I didn’t even know if "apple wine" was a thing, but Currahee Vineyards had some, so I guess it is! I'm telling you, I have been hellbent on finding apple wine since, like, January. And because I finally found it, I definitely had try some (and buy a bottle, too, just for good measures).

Then after that, we decided to go find some dinner. After after driving all over Pigeon Forge looking for a dog-friendly restaurant for, like, an hour we finally found a place to eat: Calhouns.

There's a Calhoun's in downtown Knoxville I've been to a few times, but this was the first time I’ve been to the one in Pigeon Forge. This Calhoun's had a little bit of a different – shall we say – ambience, in that the downtown location sits on the Tennessee River, whereas this one sits next to like a lumberjack show arena.

So, like, the whole time we were sitting there eating, there was just, like, a lumberjack show going on next-door, which was interesting.

Then on the way back home, we stopped off to checked out this brewery called the Blackhorse Pub that we drove by on our last trip to the Smokies. And on that trip, we were like, "That place looks really cool. We should give it a try." So this time, we actually did go and give it a try,

And that was the day! Because after the Blackhorse Pub, we made our way back to Josh's parents house ad promptly crashed for the night.

Oh, and if you've read this far and you're feeling so inclined, why not subscribe to the monthly newsletter by entering your information in the space below? Each month, I will send just a single email containing some fun new finds and recommendations and other things like that. If you decide later on that my monthly newsletter is not your cup of tea. You are able to unsubscribe at any time.

OK, that's all for today. Thank you and bye!