Vacay--First Stop, Rock City!

Seriously, this summer flew by like no one's business. How come you can NEVER say that about the winter months? Except for the holidays, February and March seem to last for an eternity but July and August pass with barely a blink of an eye! Maybe I need to add more winter activities to our schedule. Any ideas?

The second week of August, we took a family vacation to Destin, Florida. Since it's a bit of a drive and we have a four year old, we decided to split it up over two days. The first night we stayed in Chattanooga and visited Rock City the next morning. I have wanted to go every time I have seen the billboards off the interstate in western Kentucky and Tennessee. It's a bit cheesy, but in a good, campy way.

I wanted to buy this hat and dress Jonathan as a gnome for Halloween, but Bryan said that would be mean. But would it? Picture this face but with a white beard:



It's so handy to have a fourth person with us so that our little family can be in a photograph all at once! Bryan's mom came with us on this trip; having a grandmother with you on a family vacation is the best. thing. ever.



Signs like these were everywhere--how is this even physically possible?



This is what I meant by campy--LOVE IT!





Fairyland Caverns was one of the best parts. There were little gnomes tucked into the rocks in all sorts of places:





There was also a Mother Goose village where they depicted scenes from nursery rhymes along the way. culminating in a huge room with a display in the middle with pretty much every Mother Goose scene you can imagine. It was dark and lit up by black light. I adjusted the color on the pictures so you can, hopefully, get the idea:





Jonathan tried very hard to stay "in" the trail, but he became, understandably, quite frustrated:



In sum, Rock City totally rocked!