August 4, 2013 - Sunday

We slept in way too late today. At 10:30 we got ready to start our day. Chris and I made breakfast and he wanted to check out Pigeon Forge, so that’s what we did. Our plan was to come back and tube the river later that day. Our drive was scenic through a really nice state park; we around the mountains following the river. There were a ton of people out tubing and enjoying the river today. The weather was a little cloudy but still pleasant.

Chris and I got to Pigeon Forge and it was unreal! I never expected Tennessee (Smokey Mountains) to have a place like this. There were a lot of shops like you see on the boardwalk, The Dixie Stampede, Dollywood and a bunch of other really neat touristy attractions. Since we were already in Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg was only a few more miles, we kept driving to Gatlinburg. Gatlinburg was not quite as built up because there isn’t as much room along the road like in P.F. but there were still a ton of shops, some neat, some gaudy. We ate lunch outside in Gatlinburg and found some really cool places to stop. We smelled dozens of spices in a spice shop, perused a Celtic shop and drank whiskey at the Davy Crockett Whiskey Tasting Room. Whiskey is not my cup of tea but a couple of them were really delicious. They also had signs discussing the whiskey making process. The entire place smelled of yeast, so you knew they did some serious whiskey making! The whole trip was a pretty neat experience for us. Chris wanted to make a stop at the Dukes of Hazzard garage, Cooter’s-that was fun!

Pie-iron pizzas, hamburgers and hotdogs were getting old, so we traveled to another infamous Walmart for something different. On our way to Walmart, we passed a couple cool buildings and I saw a huge Titanic ship outside one! Turns out, there is one of the two largest Titanic museums in the world in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee! The museum was worth the 24.00 to get in.

I could write a couple pages about what we saw-I’ll try to keep it as short and sweet as possible. However, if you enjoy ships or the Titanic or Titanic(movie), you should make a stop. They rope you in because the employees are dressed up and they hand you a passport as you “board the ship.” Your passport gives a brief description of who you were, your age, where you were going and background information. At the end of the tour, you find out whether you lived or died-each passport contained the name of a real person aboard the Titanic. The museum is a tribute to the survivors and the deceased.

Each room was decorated as the ship would have been. Third class had rooms that looked just the movie and even had a gate with water flowing in behind it like it was going to fill the third class section of the ship. We explored each class(1^st, 2^nd, and third) as well as the outside of the ship. We got to stand and gaze at the stars outside the titanic and the next room was extremely cold(we were outside on the deck of the ship) and there was a frozen block of ice looking like an iceberg. There was a pool of water off the side of the deck that was kept at 28 degrees  so you could stick your hand in and feel what the actual water felt like to the people who didn’t make it onto lifeboats. I kept my hand in for about five seconds before it started to hurt. It’s really hard to imagine what it was like being on this shop. We learned that there actually was an author who wrote about a ship called the Titan 14 years prior. The story tells of a ship sailing through the Mid-Atlantic in April. It hit an iceberg and sank. There were not enough lifeboats for all passengers, so many perished. This is a crazy story! This was a 100% true forecast of what actually happened!

There were over 400 artifacts in this museum from the actual ship. Some artifacts were from family members or survivors and some were from the bottom of the ocean around the ship. The man who owns this museum funded the second expedition down to the Titanic in 1987. There is another museum in Branson, Missouri owned by the same man. Some of the artifacts were really touching when you read the stories behind them. Each year the museum takes on a different theme and this year they chose to honor the children aboard the Titanic. There was also an exact replica made from the actual blueprints of the grand staircase in the Titanic. We got to walk up the stairs; it was magnificent. I found it very interesting the amount of “old money” folks from Philadelphia traveling from England back to New York. My passport told of Emily Ryerson, a lady traveling to Haverford, right near my parents’. There were people traveling home to Radnor, Ridley Heights and The Widener family was also aboard and the father and son perished while the wife/mother survived.  Wow! This museum was awesome! Oh, and the only downside was not being able to take pictures inside the museum. You’ll only see pictures from the outside, so go check it out for yourself!

We grabbed dinner at a local grocery store, got back to the campsite around 9 and cooked out.

(This replica is 1/2 scale-The actual Titanic would have been twice the size of this.)