Back in July, my kids and I went on a road trip to Tennessee and it was one of the most fun trips we’ve ever been on! Here’s a quick recap of everything we did. I will have some separate posts coming with a guide to each city we visited: Chattanooga, Knoxville, and Nashville. I will also touch on solo traveling with 4 kids in this post.
Tennessee has been on our list to visit for a few years now, but it just never seemed like the best time for us to make a trip there. It is 12+ hours away, so we really needed to stay at least one week to make it worth it. Back in June, I mentioned to my husband that I really wanted us to visit and he said we could, but he probably wouldn’t have the time off to do so until October or November. I really didn’t want to wait that long and I was looking for a solo trip to do with my kids in July to get away from the Texas heat and I was like well… “what if the boys and I just go in a few weeks?” And well, that was that. My husband thought it was a great idea and I did too… so we made it happen!
He didn’t mind not coming because 1. If we loved it, we would probably all go visit again and 2. he actually was in need of some solo time to study for his upcoming CFP exam and work on our kitchen remodel, so it worked out!
You’ll notice that a lot of our travels over the last few years have been to scope out locations to see if it’s somewhere we may want to move. But it’s also a great excuse to visit somewhere new and have some fun! This is a big reason why we did a tour of the whole state, so we could really get a feel for different areas.
Whenever people hear that I travel with my kids alone, they are shocked haha so let me preface this with a little bit of background information lol. 1. I take my 4 boys out with me allll the time. It’s really nothing new. We drive to different parks and state parks. We run errands and go shopping together. I’ve been doing this for years. It’s not unusual for us to drive a few hours for a day trip. So traveling with them isn’t really a big deal for us- just another day spent together, just a little more fun and sleeping in a hotel instead of at home 🙂 2. We did our first solo trip one year ago in Colorado for 5 days. That went well, so I felt pretty confident about doing this trip.
And to be completely honest- I solo parent a lot because my husband travels for his job fairly regularly. A few weeks after this trip, I did 9 days of solo parenting at home and that was 10 times harder than this trip haha. I cannot explain it, but being out and about with 4 kids solo is so much easier than staying home solo. Okay enough about that… let’s talk about the trip!
We took 9 days total and did a big tour of the state of Tennessee. It was SO fun! If you’ve never done a tour of a state like this, I highly recommend it. This was my first time doing it and I loved getting to see so many parts of the state. Although, I’d recommend choosing a smaller state because that would take weeks in somewhere like Texas lol.
Here’s what we did:
Day 1: Drove about halfway to Little Rock, Arkansas: stopped at a park, then got dinner, and went to our hotel
Day 2: Drove to Chattanooga, Tennessee: this was a long day- 9ish hours driving. We went straight to our hotel
Day 3: Explored downtown Chattanooga- this was so much fun!
Day 4: Spent the morning in Chattanooga, then drove to Knoxville
Day 5: Explored Knoxville and went on a hike at a nature center
Day 6: Spent the day in the Smoky Mountains, hiked in the national park, and stayed in the mountains for the night
Day 7: Drove from the national park to Nashville
Day 8: Explored Nashville
Day 9: Drove back home in one day
More to come on all of the activities that we did!
You can also see a reel of our trip HERE.
IJams Nature Center, Knoxville Chattanooga
Some snaps in Nashville
Below: Some snaps from our time at Smoky Mountain National Park- the highlight of our trip!
