Summer Vacation in the Smoky Mountains: Pretrip

Pretrip

As several of my vacations have, this trip came about through several twists and turns. Through much of the 2015-2016 school year, I was determined that as soon as school ended, I was going to do a road trip. I really wanted the flexibility to just visit wherever I wanted to. However, school wasn’t ending until June 20th, the bombshell was dropped that my entire office needed to be packed, because not only was I moving to a different school in the district, but the speech room I’d been in was being relocated within the building (meaning I’d be returning to school beyond the 20th to finish purging and boxing everything), and I had to be back at work by July 1st for summer school set up day. So my beginning of summer road trip window was tiny. And I came to realize that, after a wild school year, I was WAY too tired to attempt a legitimate road trip in that short window of time.

I also knew that when summer school ended, I really wouldn’t have time for a road trip before the regular school year started. Mom had a 60th birthday happening, and the combination of that and some other things on the calendar just weren’t jiving. And I had a feeling I’d be pretty tired after summer school. Because of the quantity of kids requiring speech services, they’d given me clearance to start my day early and end late, and schedule certain students before/after the regular summer school day.

So...in the week and a half between the time I finished clearing out my old office, and summer school set up, I started pricing airfare for August. There was really no option left uninvestigated. In the end, the best option ended up being a trip to eastern TN. I booked flights, flying into Nashville on 8/16, and home the morning of 8/21, two days before school would start again. And I booked a hotel in Gatlinburg from 8/16-8/20.

And that was the extent of my planning for awhile. Summer school started, Nick and I got engaged, and trip planning went out the window. I even considered canceling the trip because, well, Nick and I got engaged, but we both agreed that if I didn’t have a vacation scheduled, I wouldn’t end up doing anything for myself, so I kept the trip on the books.

Eventually summer school ended. I had roughly 10 days to get the trip planned, so I got to work and loosely planned the trip. I was definitely going to be winging things a bit more than usual.

Those 10 days passed quickly, and pretty soon my suitcase was packed, and I was on my way to mom’s for the night. It was her 60th birthday, so we did a big dinner out and then crashed for an early alarm the next morning.