We need your help!

Phyllis and I are going to disappear for a week to celebrate our anniversary. While we're gone, we are asking you to put your thinking caps on and help us with a Smoky Mountain Tower question.

As you saw in our last post, we now have a very large empty wall that our guests will see when they first arrive at Smoky Mountain Tower:



Here is our question: What should we put on that wall?

Some things to think about:

• It shouldn't look too 'commercial.'
• It should fit into the neighborhood.
• It should be a 'welcome' to our guests.

What are your suggestions? You've got a week to get back to us (either by email to dave@smokymountaintower.com or reply on Facebook. Our daughter, Angie, will be watching over things while we're gone and may post this again as a reminder. Or, she may post something else - you know, 'while the cat's away...'

We can't wait to see all the good ideas you come up with!

Something new at Smoky Mountain Tower

We've teased you long enough. We're now ready to show you what's happening at Smoky Mountain Tower.

This is the way the front of Smoky Mountain Tower looked before last Monday:


Look closely at the area just to the left of the cabin. If you've been there, you'll remember the walkway that went down several steps, then up some steps to the back deck. It looked like this:


As of Monday, all that is gone - and so are the big overgrown bushes in front. Our good friend, Mark Kalinowski is building a walkway that goes from the driveway to the main deck - with no steps! It's not quite finished, but here's what it looks like as of this morning:


And, as you can see, the big bushes are gone, too. So if you were to drive in to the driveway today, this is what you would see:


(Sorry, it's a cloudy day - we'll get more pictures when the sun comes out.) We have some small holly bushes to be planted in the front. And we have lots more to show you about the process of building the new walkway. When it's all finished, we'll come back with more pictures - and some other plans for the front area. Meanwhile, please let us know what you think about this. Hope you like it as much as we do!

Partly personal

Okay, I might as well tell you. In about 10 days, Phyllis and I will celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary. Somehow, our Gatlinburg property manager/cleaner, Ingrid Nelson, found out about this. When we told her we were coming to Gatlinburg on Monday, she said, "You're staying at Smoky Mountain Tower - and don't eat dinner before you get here."

We arrived on Monday about 5:30 pm - and this was waiting for us outside by the front door:


It even plays music (I should make a video so you can hear it)! But we were blown away when we got inside. This is what awaited us:


In the refrigerator, we found a feast:


There was even a bag of 'instant-light' charcoal waiting for us. So we lit the charcoal, cooked the baked potatoes that were all wrapped and ready for the oven, and - for the first time ever - sat at our own table and enjoyed a wonderful meal!


Thank you, Ingrid. You are really special and we very much appreciate all you do for us. Tomorrow, I'll show you what's going on outside Smoky Mountain Tower.

We're in Gatlinburg!

Yep, we arrived about 5:30 pm at Smoky Mountain Tower. You HAVE to see what Ingrid had waiting for us.

That's the good news.

The bad news is that I can't show you until probably tomorrow. We found out that the Internet has a problem at Smoky Mountain Tower. It's a Charter issue, and they're coming out to fix it tomorrow night.

Meanwhile, I ran over to All Decked Out just so I could check email and load this message. This is a "warning." We have a LOT to tell you about what's going on at Smoky Mountain Tower. As soon as we get a good Internet connection back, we'll try to get some pictures uploaded. So please keep watching. I'm sorry to tease you like this - but we'll get more information to you as quickly as we can. Thanks for being patient.