Pigeon Forge {Day 2}

We drove up to Gatlinburg on Sunday to check out things there. It was about a ten minute drive from Pigeon Forge.

We walked around and looked at some of the shops. Here are the kids with my parents.

James & Hannah in front of a Christmas display.

We told the kids that we might see some black bears. Not exactly what they had in mind.

We ate lunch at the Loco Burro. Hannah rode the mechanical burro afterwards.

Here the kids are posing with the burro.

After we were finished with downtown Gatlinburg, we decided to drive through the Smoky Mountain National Park. We were on a mission to see some real bears. While driving through the park, we saw a bridge and decided to park and explore. The grandparents chose to stay in the van and rest a bit.

Here is Hannah on the bridge.

Hannah and me

Chris and me

The kids (and Chris) decided to go climb around on the nearby rocks.

Hannah

I made them pose together for a picture.

Here's a view of the bridge and the stream. It was absolutely beautiful!

 We got back in the van and drove around some more. We found some wild turkeys.

While driving around we saw a bunch of cars pulled over to the side and people getting out to look at something across the road. So we decided to see what they were looking at and we got to see our black bear! 



This picture is a little better. 

I had really hoped that we would see a bear in the wild. I was very happy that we saw one so early in the trip! We went back to the Smoky Mountains for hiking later in the week and we didn't see any wildlife other than some squirrels.