Hastily-Planned Gatlinburg Trip

This past weekend, Blythe Bird Watchers teamed up with Goose's Craft Corner (My mom aka "MotherGoose; Lord of the Crafts") and traveled to Gatlinburg, TN for a fun-filled weekend of...well, not birding, but visiting family, leafing the fall foliage, and witnessing the first snowfall of the 2017 fall season.

Eastern Phoebe in the snow

While we weren't able to do any actual birding, we did visit the Art and Crafts Community of Gatlinburg which was pretty neat. There were numerous bead stores, local jewelry designers, fossil and artifact shops, handmade soap stores....and many more . We missed the main stretch of downtown Gatlinburg, but it was raining just about the entire time and below 45 degrees so our options were limited to indoor activities.

Saturday:

Luckily, there was Rainforest Adventures Discovery zoo within a few miles of our hotel. Located in Pigeon Forge, this zoo housed a decent array of tropical birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians. I've included a few photos of the highlights.

My favorites were the various parrots and macaws they had out in the open that climbed around and were able to interact with visitors (rather than being confined in a cage). I had never seen a set-up like they had where the birds were just right there in front of you.

These birds were very used to people, and repeated various phrases and songs.. (If only we could get our budgies, Cheeko and Cleo, to just whistle ONE song!)

Yellow-Naped and Yellow-Headed Amazon Parrots

We finished our Saturday with a scenic tour of Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail (really stupid, long, tedious name!) But beautiful scenery:

Sunday:

Our last day of our hastily-planned Gatlinburg trip. I ended up getting barely any sleep due to Goose's Craft Corner presenting me with a collection of beautifully made sculpey pieces. (I have some ideas for these that I plan to incorporate into the Spring 2018 collection,

We woke up to find it snowing around 9am. We decided to end our trip by taking one last foliage tour through Roaring Motor Nature Fork Trail (whatever that damn name is!) and were pleasantly surprised that, due to the elevation change and colder temps, we were driving through a winter wonderland!

Goose's Craft Corner, Connor and I, and Favorite brother in Snow

My son, Connor, got to see and touch real snow (more than he's ever actually seen) for the first time! It was a great way to end our hastily-planned Gatlinburg trip!