Hoosier Family Vacation Day 5 - White Water Rafting

The next day was Thursday.

We started the day with a late breakfast at the Old Mill Restaurant.

Addy was ready to eat!

The banana nut muffins were delicious.

But unfortunately, I wasn't that impressed with the rest of the food. (Which seems to be a reoccurrence on all our vacations. Nick says it's because we live in Texas & Texas has the yummiest foods! I think he's probably right!!)

After breakfast, we all split up again. Some people went back to the cabin, some went shopping & Nick, the kids & I went to do something that I had been wanting to do, ride the Alpine Coaster.

The coaster runs on about a track that is about a mile long & is built into the side of a mountain.

Alex didn't want to ride it so Nick offered to stay in the truck with him while my little speed junkie rode it with me!

Here we are on the way up. I didn't get any pictures on the way down since we were flying at around 30mph & I didn't want to lose my phone!

The coaster was a lot of fun & a must if you find yourself in Pigeon Forge!

After that, we headed back to the cabin to get ready to go white water rafting on the Big Pigeon River!

This was my first time to ever go rafting & OMG it was so much fun! Since we had the littler cousins with us, we just did the lower part of the river with the level 1 & 2 rapids. My kiddos loved it so much that next time we'll definitely have to do level 3s & 4s!

We were supposed to stay Thursday night & check out of the cabin on Friday morning. But Nick decided to skip rafting & instead take a nap so that we could leave Thursday night & drive overnight. Which means this was our last day in Tennessee & a what a fun last day it was! 

Like I previously stated, before going on this trip, I really didn't think there would be much to do there. But boy was I wrong. We did so much & there was still more I wanted to do. (Make that... is still more I want to do. Because I plan to go back to Tennessee one day & hike part of the Appalachian Trail, drive up to Clingmans Dome, hike to some of the waterfalls, go shopping in Gatlinburg, ride a horse through the park, ride the Alpine Slide at Ober Gatlinburg, raft on the bigger rapids on the upper part of the river & maybe go to Dollywood if it's not 100 degrees outside!) 

So.. if you've never been to the Smokies Mountains & you get the chance to go, DO IT! You won't be disappointed!

And if you haven't read about the rest of our trip, 

here's Day 1 & 2, Day 3 & Day 4.