This weekend, Pops and GraGra surprised us with a getaway to Nashville.  They had tickets for the new Arctic Plunge exhibit, on the lawn of the Opryland Hotel.

We left early Saturday morning and drove the almost-2-hours to Nashville.  We checked into our hotel and let Pops rest for a while since he wasn’t feeling well.  While he recouped, we went to the Opry Mills mall for lunch and a little shopping.  And maybe some carousel-riding.  (Originally, Jase wasn’t going to ride the carousel.  He kept reaching both arms towards the horses, though, so we gave in and bought him a ticket.  The entire time he was riding, he had the biggest grin on his face!)

Traffic in Nashville gets RI-DIC-U-LOUS in the evening hours.  We had intended to visit the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and a few other things that evening, but we got stuck in some major traffic.  We decided to spend the evening swimming at the indoor pool and hit up the Arctic Plunge the next day.

The Arctic Plunge is three large slides packed with real snow.  (There are supposed to be six slides but the weather is unusually warm right now, so they were only able to have three operating.)  

Each person carried a tube up the steps and then took the plunge.  Each person was able to tube ten times.  (If you didn’t want to tube all ten times, you could hand off your ticket to someone else in your party and go extra times!)

My girls were at a great age to enjoy the slides.  I think anyone over 10 would get bored after a few slides.  The workers were really great to make it more fun by spinning the tubes or sending them down backwards.

There was also an ice-skating rink, the ICE! display, a snowball toss game, and a vendor tent all set up on the lawn of the hotel.  It was a regular winter fun land.  For more information, visit the Gaylord website.

And a big shout-out to Pops and GraGra for such a fun weekend!