Great trip!

This morning, left the hotel at 8pm after our complimentary breakfast. We were meeting CT's American colleague and his family at this certain location which he gave us the directions to. The meeting point is about 45 mins drive away. We meet at 9am and then we followed his car to a nearby Walmart to park our car so that we can just go together in his car.

He brought his wife,Sharon and his 10 year old son, Ty. CT's colleague is called Jerry, who has been CT's mentor during this training in Tennessee. They have 3 kids but Ty is the youngest and still stay with them, so he came along.

He drove us to Tellico Plains where we saw rivers,waterfalls and lots of beautiful trees. The first waterfall we saw was a huge one which CT and Jerry went to climb. They climbed all the way to the top and CT came down sweating so much while Jerry did not even break a sweat. Ha.
Jerry is very fit for his age. He is already 50 over years old.


After looking at the waterfalls, we drive along the river and saw people playing in the river on the mini waterfalls. They were actually riding on the waterfalls..seems fun.

Then, Jerry drove us up the mountains to see the view from a top. We were about 5000 ft above sea level, travelled across the Tennessee border to North Carolina. So I actually managed to cross over to another state by driving in the park area. The weather was sunny and scattered drizzles at some parts of the journey. This is the view from the top. Very nice.

You can see from the picture that there are some dark clouds. We were glad that we were not caught in any heavy rain. It was only drizzling when we were in the car and sunny when we stepped out of the car.

Jerry has purposely taken us to this place as no tourists would know of this wonderful place and thus, it is not so crowded and the sight is beautiful.

After driving up, we went back down and did some nature trails in the forest with big trees. The trees are really huge and tall. Very nice.

Here is one of the biggest trees that we saw during our trekking..

Our trekking was about 2 miles. That is about 3 km plus. Very tiring. One our way back, I was walking in front with CT while the rest were quite far behind as Sharon prefers to walk slowly. Suddenly, I heard some ruffling noises down the trees where I was walking and I was wondering who would be down there.. I realised it was a black bear when I saw black fur coated animal which is about 1 m long. It should be a bear cub. I pointed out to CT as I was so excited and the bear was running quite fast. After that, we walked with so much caution back because if there is a cub, there would be a mummy bear. So, we were quite afraid. Heard many stories here about bears killing people. The bear was running too fast for me to take a pic..so cannot show. Sorry

After so much walking, we drove down to a beach area. Initially, Jerry told us that he was taking us to the beach now, I was surprised as Tennessee is in the middle of states..how can there be a beach? So I realised that when he meant by beach is diff from what I expected. It is actually a river among the forest. Very nice. I loved it so much that I told CT that I wanted to come back to swim as I did not bring my swimming costume.

There were people swimming, playing by swinging on the rope to te river like tarzan and some brought their dogs in..so cool. And the other thing I like is that there is a shop selling food by the beach. SO, we had our lunch there by the beach. Ate hotdogs and burgers plus a cool lemonade. Yum!

Our last stop was at the beach. So we stayed and watched what people did before we went back. I had so much fun watching the dogs fetching the balls in the river and just walking in the river.

It is so scenic with big trees surrounding the river.

Jerry brought us back to our car and we went back. Had dinner at Thai Restaurant with Gek Teng as Kok Fong has been out for night shift (4pm to 12 midnight). So she came along to just 'waste' her time even though she has eaten already. The Thai food was nice and spicy. We ordered chicken wing with pork stuffing, tofu with veggies, pork with lemon grass and green curry beef. Very nice but filling as the dishes came out big portions. I was so full when I went back to hotel. Think I cannot sleep tonight..