Dollywood day and reunited with Crystal! Surprisingly, Camping World called very early with news… Crystal Betty’s fixed! Actually, they couldn’t re-create the problem and after thorough diagnostics couldn’t find anything wrong! They said RVs do that sometimes, act finicky and then work fine. Maybe this is a case of “turn it off and turn it back on” (a bunch of times) and it fixed itself. It was totally worth bringing in since Mat and I weren’t going to use the slide again for fear of it getting stuck out and therefore us getting stuck in one spot. And we learned how to manually crank slide in IF it were to happen again, something our camping world told us we couldn’t do with our one touch system (eye roll). So we have to give credit to the Knoxville Camping World, they saw our RV quickly and didn’t charge us a thing! Pretty typical Solso luck… maybe a few challenges but it all works out. Feeling very grateful for the resolution of this problem and happy for the extra 2 feet of space.

More importantly, Dollywood was a blast! Their on-site kennel was very sweet and clean, you drop off your dog and come back as often as you want during the day to walk your own pup. Murphy seemed to love Doggywood and didn’t mind going back after his walks. We were in the park for opening, with fast passes, and rode tons of BIG rollercoasters before lunch. At one point Emerson loudly screamed “I don’t want to do this” while we were paused at the top of a very large loop-de-loop, and Maddy sat out of the one that takes you straight up and drops you down, but otherwise they were happily trying the black diamonds (think ski slope ratings) to dad’s delight and all of the blue rated roller coasters! Our kids are old enough that we could spilt up for a bit so the kids did one of their favorites again while Mat and I tried the Wild Eagle – it was the smoothest roller coaster I’ve ever been on and super awesome from the front seat! Kids couldn’t be talked into it this trip.

More highlights of the day:

• ALL the rides. The kids rode the Dragonflier rollercoaster 9 times! They would have gone a 10th time but their last ride was at 9:30 with fireworks starting over them, such a cool memory.
• The Dolly exhibits: seeing her tour bus and her Chasing Rainbows museum (Emerson got the “Who was Dolly Parton?” book years ago and became an instant fan and Dolly’s popularity has since grown through the whole Solso house).
• Getting in tons of rides before getting caught in the pouring afternoon rain! Emerson was giggling her head off as we ran through the park soaking wet.
• Closing down the park with a fireworks and drone show – I’ve never seen anything like it, it was really cool.
• Having so much fun that we kept putting off dinner until the fireworks show at 9:30!
• Going home to our sweet Crystal Betty after a very fun (and tiring) day – 25,000 steps according to Maddy’s fit bit and 28,000 steps according to Emerson’s fit bit, that rivals any Disney day for us!