My Trip To Tennessee 8/2-8/10

Hello bookworms!!

Todays post is going to be different. I recently took a trip to Tennessee to spend some time with my family and I wanted to share how that went and what all I got up to while I was there. Don’t worry there will be some talk about books even though this post isn’t really book related. Also you might want to grab a snack and get comfy because this is going to be a long one guys sorry. I hope you enjoy!!

DAY 1: On Thursday August 2 I left my house at 7am. I stopped to get breakfast and then I was off to Tennessee. Not even 30 minutes from my house a warning light started flashing. Let me just mention that I know absolutely nothing about cars so what do I do? I kind of panic because I have no clue what the light was telling me so I tried calling my husband and texting him and of course he’s at work and doesn’t check his phone very often. Luckily there was a Walmart so I pulled into the Walmart parking lot and called him at work. Turns out the light was telling me my tire pressure was low. Again luckily I am at Walmart at this point because I just drove around and had them put air in my tires and once again I was off. Probably like an hour after that the light started flashing again so once again I’m freaking out. I should probably mention that I am by myself so if something happens like my car breaks down or something I am pretty much screwed. That light managed to come on and go off 3 times before finally staying on and each time I panicked because I don’t know what I would do. Also it rained the entire way to my sisters house and about 30 minutes from her house I hit a puddle of water in the road and it pulled my car into the other lane. Luckily there were no cars around me. Needless to say I was pretty much white knuckling it all the way to Tennessee. A trip that should have taken me about 3 and a half hours ended up taking me 5 hours. After I made it to my final destination all I did was sit at the house and play with the kids because my mom and sister were at work still.

DAY 2: Friday is when the fun started. We had decided to go to a place called Wilderness at the Smokies which is a resort type place that has water parks. You can get day passes which are surprisingly very affordable. My mom bought my ticket ahead of time to make sure we would be able to go and it was only 30 something dollars I think. We woke up really early because we had to stop and eat breakfast and then it was an hour drive to the park. We got there a few minutes before they opened at 9 and we stayed until almost 5. This place had 3 different water parks plus an arcade which we let the kids do as we were leaving. When we got there it was a little cloudy so we left the sunscreen in the car and needless to say I ended up getting really burnt. I didn’t get any pictures of how burnt I was but I am still peeling and its been over 2 weeks ago now. This place had water slides, a wave pool, a lazy river, and places for little kids to play. Of course you have to climb stairs to get to the top which is no big deal I just have to get out of my wheelchair and crawl up the stairs easy right? Well for me it wasn’t lol. I am so out of shape that by the time I reached the top I felt like I was dying. My heart was racing and I was struggling to breath. I had to let a few people go before us it was so bad. Once I calmed down a little bit we finally went down the slide and it was fun. It was a very long day but it was so fun even if I was in pain for several days after. I thought I would share a few picture with you guys just please ignore my weird faces lol.

In the first picture I am pushing my niece and my brother-in-law is pushing me. The picture beside it you can see my niece and I’m sneaking up behind her with my mom behind me. If you look all the way to the back of the wave pool you can barely see my head. I am a pretty strong swimmer and I love swimming but wave pools wear me out because I can’t touch the bottom so I am constantly having to swim. In the last picture my brother-in-law got a picture of me coming down a different waterslide from the one I was talking about earlier. Getting to the top of these slides wasn’t so bad because there wasn’t as many stairs I had to go up so I ended up doing these multiple times.

DAY 3: The day after we went to the water park was a very chilled day. Everybody pretty much slept in and IDK about everybody else but my whole body was sore. I used muscles I don’t normally use and I was so burnt. Everybody else got some sun but I don’t think anyone got as burnt as me. After lunch me and my mom went to a tire place down the road from their house to have them check my tires. At this point the light had gone back off. They checked the sensors and said those were working and then they took every tire off to check them and they said those were fine. He said if the light came back on to come back in and to not put any air in it until he checked it. After leaving the tire place me and my mom went to a place I have never been before and that was Barnes and Noble. I live in a small town that doesn’t really have book stores and if I want to go to a big name book store I have to drive an hour or more from my house. Before I even left on my trip I looked to see if there were any bookstores near where they lived and this was one of the ones that popped up. They were packed by the time we got there so I didn’t get to take any pictures but I did find some books. I took some cash with me solely for the purpose of going to the bookstores. This was the first bookstore I went to on this trip and I kept grabbing books I wanted I couldn’t seem to stop myself. I ended up grabbing 4 books which was way over my budget but surprisingly my mom ended up buying them for me. I tried to stop her but she blocked me from the cash register.

I came home with Emma in the Night. When Dimple Met Rishi, The Darkest Minds, and All Your Perfects. I think all 4 of these ended up being a little over 40 dollars but I’m pretty sure all of them were discounted except for All Your Perfects by Colleen Hoover because it was a new release.

DAY 4, 5, & 6: We didn’t do much the next few days. I did go with my mom to visit my grandpa and after she finished with all his bills and everything we went to lunch where I had a BLT. I never order BLTs because I am very picky when it comes to my bacon. My bacon has to be really crispy like to the point of burnt because I hate the fattiness. If there’s the least bit of fat on it I want eat it so I was pleasantly surprised when they actually cooked it the way I liked it. I know y’all are probably like hey just tell them how you want it and I do but 9 times out of 10 it’s still not right.

Day 7: Me and my mom went to another bookstore that I have never been to before and that was Books A Million. The kids went back to school this day and she had to be back home to help get a neighbors daughter off the bus so we went to the bookstore first thing in the morning when they opened. Before going to the bookstore though we stopped at the tire place because that light had come on again. He again checked everything and still told me everything was fine and that it must just be a sensor going out. We then went to the bookstore. Once again I didn’t get any picture but this was because I forgot. All I could think about was which books I was going to get. We spent about an hour looking around. I picked up and put back so many books that I would have loved to have but in the end I came home with 4 more books.

I came home with Our Chemical Hearts, Cress, Saint Anything, and More Happy Than Not. All 4 of these were only $26. They were all marked down except for the Adam Silvera book it was the most expensive at $10. I’ve been wanting to read his books so I finally bought one. I did buy these ones myself. After leaving the bookstore we went to the grocery store to get what we needed for supper which was spaghetti. Spaghetti is one of my favorite foods if you didn’t know. After that we just sat around the house being lazy and I played with my niece.

Day 9: My mom, sister, and brother-in-law were all off of work so we went to my grandpas house and helped him with some yard work that he needed done because he isn’t able to do it himself. I helped where I could but for the most part my brother-in-law did all the work. At one point he got out the lawn mower to mow over some weeds and stuff we cut down. Me being a double amputee I have never been able to use a lawn mower but the one my grandpa has is a zero turn mower (says my husband) which I was able to drive using my hands. I didn’t cut the grass but I really wanted to drive it because it was something I have never been able to do. Again excuse my weird face.

I only rode on it for like a minute because honestly it scared me a little but hey I’ve finally got to run a mower on my own. After finishing up there we went back to the house and waited for the boys to get home from school and then we met my grandpa for supper.

Day 10: This was the day I headed back home. My plan was to leave around 8 or 9 but of course it was pouring down rain so I didn’t leave until the storm passed which was around 10. I have to use a GPS to get me to where I want to go and the one I use on my phone likes to take me the back way. I wanted to go back the same way I came so I had to get directions from my mom to get back on the interstate which I was nervous about because I am not good with directions unless it’s coming from my GPS. Luckily I got to where I wanted to go with no problem. It only rained on me until I made it to North Carolina and then it was sunny all the way back home to Georgia. That dang tire pressure warning light came on and off 3 more times but since being home it has gone off and stayed off. The ride home was less stressful than the ride there was and it took me less time to get back home then it did to get there.

I should also mention that all throughout the week while in Tennessee at night after everybody had gone to bed or sometimes first thing in the morning before everyone woke up I would try to listen to 2 chapters of Coraline because I was buddy reading it with Noriko. I managed to fall behind on this a little bit but for the most part I did pretty good and I was only a day or 2 behind her to finish it. You can read my review here, her review here, and her post on our discussion of the book and movie here. Usually when I am out of town I have every intention to read but then I never do so I am really happy that I managed to pretty much stay on track reading this even though I wasn’t at home.

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That was everything I got up to while in Tennessee visiting my family. I have come to the conclusion that I am a very anxious driver which I pretty much already knew. I have driven to Florida, Tennessee, and South Carolina by myself every time and I am always scared. Like I mentioned earlier I am screwed without my GPS and I know absolutely nothing about cars so I probably shouldn’t even be driving lol. I hope you enjoyed this post even though it was a long one. Let me know in the comments what kind of driver you are?