It was Christmas during my junior year of high school, and I had been invited to a softball camp at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga. Unfortunately, three days before we were supposed to leave, the camp was canceled because of weather. With all our hotels booked, and my parents already taking off work, we decided to turn it into a vacation to the Smokey Mountains.
I remember my brother and I, both born and raised in Florida, praying that we would get to see snow for the first time. I had gone 16 years of my life without ever seeing snow. I know that sounds crazy to a lot of you, but my family prefers warm weather and vacations to the islands.
Well, that Christmas, these Florida kids’ prayers were answered, and there was snow fall on our drive up to the mountains. Let me tell you, it was a lot of snow! So much snow that we were stuck on the interstate three miles from our hotel for two hours waiting for the road to be plowed, but my brother and I didn’t care. We got out of the car and began to play in the snow. Everything from snowball fights to building a snowman, we did all of this on the side of the road while hundreds of cars were backed up – probably getting a good laugh at two kids randomly playing in the snow.
The next morning, it got even better. I could not even tell you how much snow fell that night. Outside our window, everything was covered in white. Our hotel was located on a golf course, but you would never know because of how much snow there was. We spent the whole morning exploring the property in clothes definitely not suited for walks that we were ankle-deep in snow.
Although we were only in the Smokey Mountains for a few days, we got to go to a ski resort and go snow tubing,;we explored the Smokey Mountain National Forest, which was beautiful covered in ice and snow; and of course, we did some shopping in Pigeon Forge.
In all the movies, you always correlate Christmas with snow and the cold. My Christmases growing up were in shorts and the sunshine, which makes it very difficult to get into the Christmas spirit. That Christmas in the mountains is one of my favorites because it truly felt like a Christmas I had always dreamed of: a white christmas.
