After 6 weeks of the stay at home order we decided to get out of Chicago. We went on a road trip and drove to Sevierville, TN (close to Pigeon Forge) and spent 6 nights (April 26 - May 1st) at the Paradise Mountain Pool Lodge. The house slept 16 people with 6 bedrooms, an indoor pool, hot tub, game room and theater room. The drive there went by so fast - it was supposed to be an 8 hour drive, but it took us about 9 hours with stops. Tuesday night Kat and Paxton arrived and spent the week with us. We continued the quarantine and ordered groceries and dinners and went on long walks in the mountains, hung out at the house and watched a lot of movies in the home theater. It was so nice to get away - we really needed the change of scenery. On Friday we went on a horse back riding excursion through the mountains and the river. Grayson went on a horse all by himself (with a helmet of course) and he did such a great job. I was very nervous, but he handled his horse so well. Liam went on a horse with Daddy and loved to comment on how the horse was behaving and what was going on - we have some cute videos of his commentary. Phil and Logan arrived Friday night. Saturday we drove 9 hours to St. Augustine, FL and rented a house with the Ross family. The house was right on the beach so we pretty much had the beach to ourselves. We spent the days doing e-learning, eating lunch and then spending the day on the beach. Each night we ordered food and hung out. After 5 nights in St. Augustine we drove to Amelia Island, FL (1 hour north of St. Augustine, FL). We stayed at the Ritz Carlton. It was nice to lounge by the pool and pretend that things were back to normal. We quickly were reminded of the pandemic we were dealing with after turning on the news. Saturday we drove 7 hours to Nashville, TN and stayed at the Hyatt House Hotel. The next day we drove home. Sadly, when we were almost 10 minutes from home we got in a car accident. No one was hurt so that was a good thing, but we had to wait for the police. There was a car stopped on the highway in a terrible spot with no shoulder and no one could see it before turning the curve. We slammed on our breaks as soon as we saw the car in front of us break, but because of the hydroplaning from the rain we bumped the car in front of us. Luckily Craig did not get a ticket and our insurance handled everything.
Here are the pictures from our road trip...
Posts
