honeymoon pt. 7 - gatlinburg/pigeon forge

what's cuter than one baby? twins! after pensacola beach, we headed to cleveland for dinner at ryan's (ej loves the steak window - you just ask for steak, and they give it to you! as many times as you want!) and a visit with these guys...
before heading on through the smoky mountains. hey! bear! hay bear!

soon we arrived at our favorite place in the world -- gatlinburg, tn. the combination of beautiful nature scenes

and utter tackiness

really suits us. there is always something new to see. this time our first stop was parrot mountain. it was pretty much what it said on the label - a mountain, with lots of exotic birds.

it was steep and noisy and christian themed and a pretty good time overall. if you happen to really like parrots, you can have a photo taken with birds all over you. we opted not to experience that, but we did feed some nice birds.

if it weren't for the screeches echoing through the woods, the gardens would have been quite peaceful



and if you REALLY like parrots, they had some babies available for sale at the end.

cute. then we went to ober gatlinburg wildlife encounter to see some more animals. they have a nice pit full of cuddly black bears

and our favorite - otters!

this time we stayed in a sparkly clean suite in the holiday inn vacation club and had a view of the space needle and sky lift.

after some time wandering gatlinburg and sitting by the fire, the honeymoon was over


(awwwwwww) and we headed home.

we made it just in time to gather supplies for our first thanksgiving dinner as a married couple. yum.



after all that, we were very sleepy.