I'm leaving tomorrow for my first vacation without Dave. I should be packing instead of posting, but I'm finding it hard to get motivated. Dave and I loved to travel, and besides our smaller trips, we always took one really nice vacation every year, and we almost always went to the beach. We traveled to beaches all over, the US, Mexico, Islands. This year, we planned our trip to Gatlinburg Tennessee because it is close to home, (I live in Kentucky),  and he was having so many complications from his cancer that we didn't want to find ourselves with a medical emergency on our hands in someplace like the Cayman Islands. We booked a lovely little chalet with the deck overlooking the mountains. We were going to do some fun stuff, like zip lining through the Smokies, but mainly it was going to be a very relaxing vacation. We would sip our morning coffee out on the deck and read our kindles. We would take some walks, maybe hit the moonshine store, and grill out some steaks or even some swordfish, if we could find some fresh, on our deck while we enjoyed our evening cocktails. God, I miss him so much! My mother graciously agreed to go on the trip with me and she plans to distract me and treat me to fancy dinners and afternoon teas. It will be a completely different kind of vacation and I'm grumbling a little bit about all the dresses, but I'm honestly rather grateful. Since it will be so different than what I had planned, maybe it will help me miss him a little less. Thank goodness we're not going to a beach! I've been wondering a lot lately about how I'm going to feel when I hear the ocean for the first time without him. This is so hard. <3 Anita