We stayed in a condo with friends when we were there. That was nice because we had our own seperate bedrooms and bathrooms. The aquarium is very nice, we also went to 'Ripley's Believe it or Not' which was okay. There was a very nice craft show in one of the large buildings downtown going on when we went..it may be there all the time? We also went into the park...a 5 mile drive took us about 3 hours (it's a one way road, hilly & crowded with cars)..we did stop and hike up one of the shorter trails. We had kids with us, so we didn't do a lot that wouldn't have interested them. The thing about Gatlinburg that I remember most is the amount of people that were there. I've been to Vegas, Branson and a lot of other places...but was just amazed at the amount of people downtown when we arrived on the first night. Make sure your brakes are good...the hills will do a number on them! :-)

Schools are not really designed for tornadoes. I never understood why they do not plan for tornadoes when they design schools. They have us take the children in the halls, sit on knees, put head on floor, and cover heads. Some get to go to the restrooms and sit the same way. Have you ever seen or smelled an elementary school's bathroom? Maybe that is something we could do. Talk to legislatures about making schools safer in design. Redo front door areas so people cannot get in just because they want to. We all think we should be able to walk into "our" schools, but times have changed. People do crazy things now. Then build a saferoom in every classroom. More and more other states are getting tornadoes, not just tornado alley. We saw more in other states last year than we had in ok last year. I just hate to see the children at risk. Peke

I agree, plant the area with three ideas in mind. One to make it look natural, two to make it so you enjoy looking at it, and three plant it with the idea of attracting wild life. One of the most difficult things is to make a woods look natural. It takes time to work the area cutting the poison ivy and green briar, and similar plants while at the same time encouraging the good native plants like Virginia creeper, and the hundreds of other plant native to your area. To make it attractive I would add some flowering trees and bushes. Consider not only the flowers, but also the color of the foliage. While you are some distance north of us, we have placed azaleas and camellias. There are things like Hydrangea, lilac and such that also produce flowers. Lastly do things to encourage the wild life in your yard. While in some ways they are a pest squirrel are a lot of fun to watch as they jockey for position on the feeder, Flowers encourage Hummingbirds, again watching their dog fights is enjoyable. Flowers also encourage butterflies, You have not lived until you see a doe with two fawns and the fawns are bouncing around the yard and playing while the doe watches over them

The solution in part would depend on the "bowl" depth and grades of the rest of parcel. For about $15 of supplies (string, stakes, line level) at the big box, you can figure out grade elevations on your own. Standing water aside, with clay you would probably want to raise plantings anyway.