I am not much interested in writing about this day because overall it was a downer. We woke up to rain and headed out. The dreary grey skies did not give much hope for the trail hiking that I had enthusiastically planned for today. We drove to Gatlinburg and up into the scenic loop. The rain did not stop.

As we continued on the VERY slow drive we began to meet cars with snow on their hoods and roofs. As we drove further up the mountain the snow got thicker. It was all quite beautiful and even though it felt like we were freezing to the bone we did get out at various stops. We hardly felt like hardy Manitobans as we shivered and hopped back into the van after short forays.  On the way down we actually did see a bear and cub so that was really sweet.

Back in Gatlinburg we searched for our hotel and finally found it. It was pretty awful and we were both feeling a little down. The rain continued to pour. We were trapped in our hotel room. We did run across the street to a Honduran restaurant to have supper. This was a highlight as it was exactly like what you would find in Central or South America — two TVs with low quality Spanish programming, electrical wires all over the place, only Spanish speaking customers, bad art, and plastic flowers. It felt just like home and the authentic food that we ordered from the kitchen was just what you would expect. I had tamales and Rudy had shrimp and rice. We ran back to our hotel in the pouring rain, stripped out of our soaked clothes and made the best of the rest of the evening by reading.