Chronicles of Rose

Two of my favorite people celebrate their birthdays this month and we took off on a road trip for Spring Break...so it's been a wonderful month full of adventure and memories :)

We started off the month by attending opening weekend at Hershey Park. We bought season passes as a Christmas present for our coaster loving kiddo :)

And we had dinner at Troegs for the parents :)

This year we decided to all take a Spring Break week and visit several national parks. It's been a while since we had a road trip and so I planned out a week long loop to include 3 national parks, some side trips, and lots of fun :)

Our first side trip was planned as we were driving. I knew we were going to be close to the home of Fiesta (aka Lowell, WV) and so we detoured!

There was this crazy open grate bridge which none of us loved

But we made it and got fresh Fiesta!!

We spent the first night outside of Cincinnati because that was as far as we wanted to drive in a day. Justin found an awesome brewery with food for dinner.

(so in many of our pictures is this little wrench, the backstory is that we found it in Justin's pocket and we kept sending pictures to his coworker all week!)

Sunday we were on our way, but made another stop at a local farmer's market in Louisville, KY with an pinball room. We all had a great time playing.

And enjoyed making soda combination at their soda bar :)

After a few more hours driving we made it to our first national park: Mammoth Cave!

We enjoyed time above ground with some hiking and biking

And below ground with cave tours

Tuesday we took off to another national park with another pit stop along the way...

This time we stopped in Nashville and found some murals:

And the only full size Parthenon outside of Greece...who knew ;)

Also a shout out to Starbucks for fueling the parents who drove hundreds of miles :)

We got in late on Tuesday so had a quick dinner and hung out in our room to relax.

Before spending all day Wednesday at our second national park: Great Smoky Mountains!

The change in elevation in this park was drastic and beautiful!

Rose brought her camera with for the trip and did not have a shortage of amazing views to capture.

The only sadness came when Rose's bike got a flat tire :(

With biking cut short, we decided to hike up to the highest elevation in the park. Along the way there is also a spoke that the Appalachian trail goes through the NP.

The observation tour was amazing and we had such as clear day to enjoy the view!

Mom and dad were definitely the less complainy hikers, but Rose was kind of glad she did it ;)

And we saw ELK!!! I usually have the worst luck in spotting wildlife, but there was a whole group of elk just grazing right by the road :)

In the evening we went down our first mountain coaster

And relaxed with dinner back at our room.

During our adventures we stopped at not 1, not 2, but 3 Buc-ees. These stores are way over the top and we love them :)

On Thursday we made it to our final national park: New River Gorge National Park!

Justin found us another great brewery to enjoy with fresh pizza and maybe the best salad of my life :)

We spent Friday enjoying sites in and around the park.

We biked a trail in the park

And visited a neighboring state park with some waterfalls

And a swing!

In the afternoon we were able to walk underneath the bridge on the service walk. The bridge is 3030 feet long and 876 feet above the river at its highest point. Rose was a bit wary at first, but by the end said she would do it again!!

While we were in West Virginia we stayed at an local state park that had a hotel, Hawks Nest SP. It also had beautiful views of the river and was a really nice place to stay.

And just like that our week was over, but the memories (and hopefully the coffee mugs) will last a very long time :)

Bonus Day!! Rose was supposed to spend the day with a grandparent on Monday, but due to both grandmother's having trips to the hospital during the previous week, dad was back on duty!! Rose probably had the best day ever, so it all worked out :)