Planned Adventures for 2014 (part 2 of 3)

My second planned adventure for 2014 is a family vacation to the Great Smoky Mountains in eastern Tennessee. We haven't had an honest-to-goodness family vacation in, well, ever, so this one is going to be great and well-deserved. Our kids, Maggie and Charlie are really looking forward to it, especially to where we will be staying. We are going to camp at the Jellystone Campground in Cosby, Tennessee, which is about a thirty minute drive from Gatlinburg and abuts the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

Although this trip will be more of a family vacation than a fishing trip, I still count it as one of my planned adventures for 2014 as me and our son Charlie will get to do some fishing together and we both are really looking forward to catching some Smoky Mountain trout. Charlie, like his dad, has become a real fishing fanatic, ever since catching his first fish two years ago in a local park.

A very proud young angler!

My gear checklists remain the same, although I will wait until we are down there to inquire and purchase flies that are most likely to attract the local trout. I think Charlie wants to use live bait, but that's his prerogative. There's still time to teach him about fly fishing, he's only five years old, after all.

We've started a list of things to do when were down there:

• Auto-tour of the park, including a visit to Clingman's Dome and the Roaring Fork motor Nature Trail
• Mini-golf
• Ober Gatlinburg -cable car ride and park
• Dollywood Amusement Park
• Pigeon Forge -including some shopping at the many outlet stores
• Dixie Stampede for a dinner show
• Horseback riding
• Relax and enjoy the accomodations (pool, shade, etc.)
• and, of course, fishing

Guess who voted for horseback riding?
Maggie is going to have a blast!

We might not do everything on the list, and will most definitely end up doing some other things that are not on the list, but we like lists and this list was constructed with input from everyone in our little family.

Last, but certainly not least, we hope to meet up with a dear friend of mine that I was stationed with in Germany many years ago. Al Shortt was my first roommate when I first moved off of the Air Base where I was stationed. We had lots of fun times in Germany and he inspired me to learn to speak German. He and his family live in Tennessee now that he's retired from the Air Force, and we're hoping they make the short trip up to Gatlinburg for a day or two so we can catch up.

So, in preparation for this trip, I've also been doing a number of Internet searches for fly fishing in the Smokey Mountains. Youtube provides a wide variety of related search results, and videos like this just get me excited for the possibilities for this trip.

This, like the Pine Creek trip I'll be taking in April, will be a new experience for me and we are all very much looking forward to it.

I'd love to hear from any readers out there who have been there, whether it's fishing-related or not.