Travelogue: Friday Traveling Home from Dollywood

On Friday morning, my Night Owl husband got really smart and offered to his Early Bird wife that she could go get a coffee with our Early Bird son and enjoy sitting in the beautifully appointed lobby to play a game and chat together. It looked like an offer solely for my benefit, but it had the side benefit of letting said Night Owl sit quietly in the suite with the other Night Owl girls and not listen to me talking his ear off in an animated fashion about our day's plans. Win-win for all parties!

My coffee date!

We checked out of the wonderful resort and went to the Applewood Farmhouse Restaurant in Pigeon Forge for breakfast--where we spilled one full juice. It would be a wonderful place to explore the surrounding apple orchards, cider mill, and ice creamery during warmer months.

Instead, it was a cool, grey day with the river across the road running swollen and fast.

Likely against our better judgment, we wanted to squeeze in one more activity before we drove home, and we ended up choosing Wonderworks, probably better known as "the upside down house." Based on studying the website, I really thought it was a hands-on science museum for kids.

It was deeply not to our parental liking and we won't be returning. The establishment is so loud that one is shouting to attempt to be heard by the person standing adjacent. Each activity in the room is blaring, buzzing, and exploding, plus there is rock/pop music blaring over the loudspeakers. The lights are very dim or outright dark in the various rooms, with all the different activity stations flashing with lights, such that it felt like how I imagine a rave to be.

Most of the activities were glorified attempts at teaching science but were mostly thrill rides and video games coated in extreme over-stimulus of sights and sounds. It had cost us about $140 in tickets for our size of family and the kids were excited by all this chaos, so we tried to move through as quickly as we could without outright walking out.

Mary rode this astronaut training gyroscope thing, which is just like her . . .

The silent bubbles and playing in sand were my favorite activities, let me tell you.

The drive home was emotionally challenging and what GPS declared was 3.5 hours took us 6.5 hours, way too many unplanned stops, bickering, and a wailing baby for the final couple of hours.

The whole trip was pretty fantastic though! We formed some wonderful family memories.