Gatlinburg . . .

Since Gatlinburg isn’t that far from Nashville, we decided to program our GPS to avoid the highways staying mostly on the back roads. Later in the morning, I decided to open one of the granola bars that we had bought for our trip. I had picked out one that had cashews and almonds in it. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice that it also contained hazelnuts – a nut that I am allergic to. Luckily I ate less than half the bar – after about 20 minutes I felt a small area at the corner of my mouth start to swell. The swelling started to go across my lips and my palms and the soles of my feet started to itch. I asked Bruce to stop at the next drugstore that we passed. I even search for one on the GPS – thank goodness there was one about five miles away. We stopped there and we went in where I spoke to the pharmacist. By now I could barely speak. She ran to the drug counter, took out a box of pills and told me to take two, then another two in four hours. For the next three hours, I couldn’t talk – since I am usually chatting away – that was a long time. When we arrived at our motel and got our room, I was almost back to normal, but when gathering our stuff together, I dropped my good camera. It put a dent in the side so that the lens would not retract. In all this was a stressful day! Although Gatlinburg was over run with people, the Smokey Mountain area is beautiful.