Vacation Treasures

I'm spending this week in Sevierville, Tennessee vacationing with my husband, 3 boys and my husband's parents. We're enjoying our resort's waterparks and the natural beauty of Smoky Mountain National Park. Our most exciting outing occurred when we went on a family hike to Grotto Falls in the park and saw a black bear on the trail a little too close for comfort. The sad thing is I've got no proof of our bear scare because the camera was dead. Below is the last photo I took before the battery died.

I'm not much of a shopper most of the time but on vacation I like to look for local specialties and interesting items to take home.  My favorite souvenirs seem to be food or body care related. I've found lots of treasures so far including local sourwood honey, apple jelly, homemade lye soap and bee pollen.

I've never tried lye soap or bee pollen so I'm excited to experience them for my self. I've heard about the benefits and many uses for lye soap so I'm going to experiment with some of the suggested uses.

I've heard of the health benefits from consuming bee pollen but had never seen it for sale. We visited a little gift shop next to bee hives and that's where I found it for $4.99.  I've read that bee pollen is one of the richest, most complete foods in nature and contains a wide variety of essential vitamins, minerals, enzymes, protein and amino acids. Bee Pollen is extraordinarily rich in most of the B vitamins and also contains only a few calories per serving. It's been used in Chinese herbal medicine as a nutritional supplement for centuries. I'm planning to add it to smoothies and mix it into plain yogurt.

I'm looking forward to enjoying my treasures after the fun of vacation has ended.