Tweetsie Railroad

Last Saturday, we started our epic road trip from North Carolina to Kansas!  Zach stayed behind to finish work and oversee the move, so my parents drove out so they could caravan back with the boys and me.  Thank goodness for grandparents!  Otherwise, there's no way that I would have attempted the drive by myself.

The first stop on our trip was in Boone, in the far western part of the state.  I'd read about Tweetsie Railroad (in a US Air inflight magazine, of all places) and knew that Dan and Ben would love it.  And I was right!  Tweetsie Railroad is a small amusement park with just the right amount of excitement for boys their age.  

On Sunday, we ate our fill at the Dan'l Boone Inn before heading to Tweetsie.  First, we rode the railroad through the mountains, making a couple of stops for shootouts and Indian raids.  Then we rode the chair lift up the mountain to another small train ride, a gift shop with a train table that we had to tear the kids away from, and a petting zoo, which we didn't even make it to.  After that, we rode back down and hit the amusement park where Dan insisted on a Ferris wheel ride.  As you can see by his enormous grin, he loved it!  We sprinted back to the big railroad to make it just in time for another ride.  Then we had lunch and hit the road.

The boys were asleep before we even left the parking lot and stayed that way all through Deliverance country on the way to Tennessee.  We stayed the night in Knoxville and got up bright and early on Monday for a long day of driving to visit the Missouri Rashmans (to be continued)...