Memorial Day, Part 1

For Memorial Day we decided last minute to make a weekend out of it and go to Gatlinburg and Cade's Cove. We were amazed when we drove through Cade's Cove because we usually see a TON of deer... I think we saw less than 10. Instead... we saw a bunch of these:

Black bears! See the three in the picture above? We saw 11 total, and there were three different sets of cubs. This one particular mama had 2 cubs on one side of the road and 1 cub on the other side of the road...

So she decided to cross the road, and one of the little ones followed. See the dumb bikers? They were NOT very smart in staying close while mama was crossing the road. It's NEVER a good idea to be in between a mama and her cub!

After Cade's Cove, we took a walk through Pigeon Forge, since that's where our hotel actually was. This was a gorgeous little water fall at the mill.
Yep, that's Jason's arm. He was pointing out these:
I love seeing ducklings with their mom. They're all so clumsy when swimming, especially in the current. This is how Ruston enjoyed the walk.
We stopped to listen to a little street performer sing, and Ruston found the wind chime... oops!
Finally, at the end of our walk, we stopped for some grub. Ruston was amazingly good during the day, and we had an old couple sitting by us that LOVED talking to Ruston and seeing his reactions to them. They said their youngest was 33 years old.