McCraw fun at Gatlinburg

This weekend, we flew over to Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge Airprot for the annual McCraw family get-together.   We had never flown into this airport before - the route took us over some pretty desolate terrain....no easy emergency landing sites below!!

Past the higher mountains, the terrain around Gatlinburg actually is mostly level.

Very nice, new terminal building at the Sevierville/Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge Airport.  Almost deserted (it's off-off- season there!) but the staff was very helpful. Within moments we were in our rental car and on our way to the "cabin" in Gatlinburg.

The view from the back porch - the "cabin" was a 3 level house with 5 bedrooms....

Lots of easy cooking....

It was close to Carolyn's birthday....so Sharon made sure we had a little celebration.....





And now we know why there are no professional singers in the McCraw household!







Much relaxing and playing with electronic gadgets.

The fog and clouds rolled in Saturday.

About half us us went to the Titanic display....the other half went to the Muscle Car Museum.

And it got foggier and cloudier!!

Sunday, we needed to head home....but the forecast had changed from "partly cloudy" to misty and ice in the upper level clouds (where we need to fly to get back over the Appalachian Mountatins!).....

So, we did the only thing we really could - we flew an hour out of our way to avoid the worst of it!!  Here's a little map that shows what we did (click it to blow it up):

An un-eventful flight - no ice - just some light rain and clouds....

Here was the view for the first 45 minutes....

Then we started breaking out of the clouds over Hazard Kentucky.

I love to see the valleys in this area - you can actually see how the glaciers moved thru this area eons ago...

Getting closer to home - there was a thick overcast cloud layer....but nice and smooth air.  Easy approach and warm weather below for January!