Justins Graduation

Day one. Drove 12 hours to Morganton to boyfriends parents house, end day one. haha. Day two we all drove over to Banner Elk to Grandfather mountain. Unfortunantly the swinging bridge that you have to walk across to actually get to the mountain was closed because of the weather but it was still nice. There is a few animal habitats with bears, cougars, river ottors, and deer. Plus a nice little walk through museum, gift shop and food court. Entry is $15. We then drove over to Boone and went to the original mast general store which was really cool, it has such an old but clean feel and is huge! We then went downtown which has a college, hippie type feel to it and walked up the main strip which had lots of shops and resturaunts. We ate at Macado's (very cool resturaunt) every different kind of specialty sandwich you can think of and a really eclectic atmosphere. Headed back to Morganton.
Day 3 Headed to Gatlinburg. We stayed at Riverhouse at the Park in a Grand King room. Fabulous room, not on the river as we expected but on the traffic side but nonetheless, a fabulous charming HUGE clean room with a bedroom, large living room, fireplace, huge vanity room, and whirlpool bath area. We didn't get to do everything on our itenerary but here are a list of things we did do!
Ripleys Beleive it or Not-We purchased tickets online in advance for the 3 attraction special and visited the aquarium, 3-D light maze, and did the Davy Crockett putt putt Golf (you can go twice). The aquarium was AWESOME. Do not leave Gatlinburg without going seriously! The Putt Putt was as expected, a nice way to spend quality time, and the 3D maze...eh. very short and really unamusing. We would probably visit the Ripleys Haunted House next time instead. We had Pizza at Dough Boys (nice people, expensive meal, not very good pizza and cheese bread)..Breakfast at The Pancake Pantry **AMAZING*** Now there is a Pancake restuaraunt everywhere you look but you definantly only want to visit the Pancake Pantry you won't regret it TRUST ME! and we also ate at The Smoky Bear microbrewery and resturaunt which was just fabulous as well. Great Food and decent prices. We also ate at TGI Fridays which we waited for 20 minuites before anyone took our drink orders, didn't have food that was on the menu, never refilled our drinks, served me pink chicken and I was in the bathroom all night. Wouldnt recommend that place! We also visited The National Park and that is just Priceless, admission is free and you have to visit laurel falls and cades cove at least. Your going to want to plan for a full day at the park at least. We traveled down the road a bit and visited "the christmas place" (not to be confused with the christmas shoppe) and its really awesome, a year round HUGE Christmas store that takes you at least an hour to walk around and check out all the different rooms. Really cool. We also went up on the Space Needle. It was about 16 or 17 dollars, the view was nice but worth the money? Not really. I would probably ride on one of the ski lifts next time instead. After we left gatlinburg we went to Thermal City Gold Mine on our way back to Morganton. We shared a 20 bucket and got ALOT of stuff out of it, I have a huge peice of amethyst that is at least the size of my fist. And the guy was very nice and helpful. Well I tried to keep this review as short as I could and I hope it was helpful! I had a really great time up there and I hope you guys do too!!