We decided to go down 23 and come back Interstate 75 and 64. The drive down took us about 6 hours. We wanted to see which way was faster. It ended up being faster going down Interstate 75 and 64 although it was a shorter distance going down 23. Since there was only a little rain, the drive down was pretty nice.. The leaves were changing colors and had started falling to the ground. We got to Pigeon Forge around 2:30 on Sunday afternoon and got checked into our hotel.

We took a little nap when we got to the hotel and then I went to look around a little while Melissa slept. One of the outlet malls was within walking distance so I went to check it out, and there were a few stores that I looked in before going back to the hotel.

The next day, we went to some of the other outlet malls and looked around. We decided to go to a large outlet mall about 2 or 3 miles down the road that. We looked around and bought a few Christmas presents for our families.

After the outlet mall, we went to a large Christmas store, it was one of the stores that I had visited on my last trip there. They have basically anything you could ever want for Christmas. We ended up spending over $100 dollars there. We bought some Christmas stockings and an ornament with our names and the year on it. We also bought a lot of gifts for our family there. We did get a lot of our Christmas shopping done, which is one good thing since I like to try and get done early but it always seems like I don’t.

We also looked for an engagement ring. We had been talking about getting married and planning our life together for a few months and I wanted to get a ring for Melissa. I just wanted to get her a ring so she would know that I was serious. The ring we picked out was very nice, at least Melissa and I think so. It was the engagement ring and the wedding band.

We went to Cherokee, NC one day also. It was a nice drive through the mountains and we stopped and took a lot of pictures. The leaves were really nice and about every color you could think of. We stopped at a little rest area on the Tennessee and North Carolina border to eat lunch. It was right on top of the mountain and the view was great. After our lunch, we went on over to Cherokee and went to some of the stores there. We did a little more Christmas shopping and bought a few souvenirs for ourselves. We shopped around for about two hours and then headed back to Pigeon Forge. We stopped a few times on the way back to take some more pictures.

We also drove over to Gatlinburg to look around. We had a tough time finding a place to park and ended up parking about five blocks off the main road and just walking back. It was a little chilly but it wasn’t too bad for a fall day. We walked around and looked at some of the stores and went to "Ripley’s Believe It Or Not". We spent an hour or so just looking at all the stuff in there. After Ripley’s, we walked around for a little while looking at some of the stores. When we left, we decided to drive back on one of the back roads. We stopped at one of the overlooks to eat lunch and take a few pictures.

We went back to Pigeon Forge for our honeymoon March 16, 2002. It was a little colder then, but we both still have fun, plus it wasn't as crowded as it was in the fall.