This post may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase after clicking an affiliate link it doesn’t cost you any extra, but I might make a small commission. I use this money to help pay for blog hosting, homeschool stuff, and snack cakes.
We’re on vacation in the Smoky Mountains this week and today we spent most of our time at the Dollywood amusement park.
There is a ton to explore and learn at Dollywood, so I’m a-ok with calling this a “school” day.
We started out with a trip to a buffet, because if there’s one thing you must do in Dollywood, it’s eat. But there are no pictures because we were too busy stuffing our faces.
After filling our bellies we headed over to the Dollywood Express for a train ride through some Smoky Mountain foothills. We got to learn a little bit about coal-fired steam engines and what life was like for early settlers in the area.
Totally educational.
We took in a little bit of a magic show after the train ride, and visited the magic shop that’s right next door. I might have permanently traumatized my child with a trick knife. I’ll start a therapy fund for him when we get home. We ended up with a trick bottle of ketchup, which was a little more his speed.
He seemed to have forgotten all about my knife trickery once he got on the carousel (that was operated by a no-nonsense southern woman who really wanted you to put your cell phones away while you were on the ride).
We knew we wanted to head over to the Rockin’ Roadway ride since that was a hit the last time we visited, but we got a little sidetracked when we saw the Smoky Mountain River Rampage ride.
To our surprise, Wyatt actually wanted to go on it! I’d call this lesson number two: Learning to face your fears. All I got was this blurry picture of Wyatt and Poppo coming around the corner, but I’ll love it forever.
With the river rampage conquered, we headed next door to the Rockin’ Roadway, which Wyatt declared his favorite part of Dollywood. He loved “driving” his own car.
We kind of meandered through the rest of the park and had fun going into shops and buying too many souvenirs. Wyatt even pulled out his ninja turtle wallet to make his own souvenir purchase. Hey, there’s lesson number three: Handling money and budgeting.
We eventually made it to what I think is one of the coolest parts of Dollywood, the Eagle Mountain sanctuary. It’s kind of hard to get pictures of the eagles since they’re often high up in their sanctuary, but for a quarter you can use their sweet binoculars to get a closer look. Wyatt and I spent a lot of time checking out the birds and reading all about where they live, how they hunt, and what they eat. And hey, there was lesson number four!
We were back to meandering after our stop at the eagles, and Dollywood had all these super cool fall/Halloween decorations setup that I forced Wyatt to take pictures in front of.
Like a good mother, I asked Wyatt if he wanted to try to get this ax out of the tree trunk.
He gave it a good effort, but after a few tries he looked at me with disgust and said “This thing is fake!” And maybe that was lesson number five: Your mother cannot be trusted.
We were so exhausted after our day at Dollywood, but it was totally worth it. Have you been? Do you love it? Any tips for our next visit? Because you know we’ll be back again!
P.S. I’d love for you to checkout my homeschool kindergarten board on Pinterest, as well as our Amazon Homeschool Favorites where I have curated a list of things we genuinely use and love in our homeschool life.
Want to keep up with all my cake-fueled ramblings? You can subscribe to my newsletter or find me at one of these places:
Leave a Reply