This week on BEEN THERE, we hear from 13-year-old Kay from Minnesota who tells us about a fantastic getaway!

Great Smokey Mountains

If you like traveling, the Great Smokey Mountains are the place to be. Part of the Appalachian mountains, the Great Smokey mountains stretch from Tennessee and North Carolina to Georgia.

In Tennessee you can visit Ripley's Aquarium. It has sand crabs you can hold, a tunnel that as you go through you can see strange looking sawfish, and many cool fish, octopuses, manta rays, and much, much more cool ocean creatures. You can also go to a dinosaur museum. It isn't too big, but the dinosaurs are huge…there's a Giant Crocodile like dinosaur, a giant T-rex, a giant sauropod that you can walk under and more. You can also rent cabins in the mountains.

In North Carolina you can ride through the mountains and take in the lovely view. In some places you can see vines of green ivy covering dead trees. In some places the fog is so thick that you can't see the bottom of the mountain. You can also see beautiful streams. While your there you'll definitely want to visit the Factory in Franklin. It's this really awesome place to hang out, have fun, and party. It has games galore, 3 restaurants, a indoor putt putt golf course, a outdoor putt putt golf course, Laser tag, a batting cage, a Carousel, go karts, a foam jungle gym for kids under 4 feet tall, a giant inflatable slide, there are also a few games for little kids and bumper cars.

Mica Rock

If you don't mind getting wet or getting dirty then you can play in the streams in the mountains and collect white rocks or milky Quartz. Another thing you can collect is mica which is also known as fool's gold – it's a shiny silverish rock that can be peeled off in thin layers. Another place to check out is The Ruby City museum. It has an Ancient Room with old tools and a cigar store Indian, a luminescent room with gems that glow under a black light and some of the biggest gems ever found. A good restaurant to try here in Downtown Franklin is Nick n Nate's. It's a really good Italian restaurant.

– Kay, 13, MI (aka Kailyn)