A city girl went up a mountain...

I had quite the adventure last weekend. I drove to Knoxville to visit my dear friend Kara, and the 8-hour drive was the longest I had ever done on my own. But it turned out to be a lovely drive through the Virginia countryside, and included a special stop on the way back (more on that later).

We've been blessed with beautiful, sunny weather for most of the winter, so we took advantage of it by taking a hike in the Great Smoky Mountains.

We chose a fairly easy trail that went up to a waterfall. The trail was even paved...what could possibly go wrong?

It was about a mile uphill to the waterfall, then we hiked the mile back down the mountain.

As you can see, the trail is somewhat narrow, and there's a sharp drop-off at the edge. Well, guess who slipped on the edge of the pavement and slid down the side of the mountain? Yep, that would be yours truly. I couldn't tell whether my ankle or my pride hurt more. After sitting in shock for a few minutes, I was able to get up and hobble down the mountain on my own. But, it turns out I suffered a pretty bad sprain. 

However, that didn't stop us from walking around Gatlinburg for the rest of the afternoon. Gatlinburg is certainly an interesting town. We also drove through Pigeon Forge, where I saw some truly amazing places that I kind of wanted to visit:

On my second full day, we spent an afternoon in downtown Knoxville, where we had lunch and checked out some of the shops.

On my drive back home, I drove through the town of Kingsport, Tennessee. I recently discovered that my maternal grandparents lived here during the 1930s. 

That's the original train station in the background (it's now a bank).

The downtown area was cute. I wish I could have checked out some of the shops, but I still had 6 more hours of driving...

Overall, it was an enjoyable trip, minus the injury. Hopefully I'll get to visit Knoxville again soon!