Our Anniversary Trip to Gatlinburg

Gatlinburg, May 2011

While on our trip to Gatlinburg, Andrew and I were talking about how when we got back everyone would ask how our trip was and we'd just say, "Good," but leave out all the fun details. So in an effort to tell as much about our trip as we can remember (and only have to tell it once), we decided to change this to a family blog... so that anyone who wants to keep up with our exciting life, can!

Day 1 - Saturday
We left for Gatlinburg about 8 a.m. and began our journey. As we arrived near Knoxville, we saw a sign for Johnson Bible College and thought it might be fun to see the campus. After much adventuring and exploring, we nearly turned around but then stopped for directions (and a potty break!) at a nearby gas station. We found out the reason we were having trouble finding it was because the school has changed its name. It will no longer be Johnson Bible College, but rather Johnson University. Interestingly, this school known for being conservative is taking "Bible" and "Christian" out of their name. There was a women's retreat happening on campus, and when I asked a couple of ladies about it, we discovered the name change happened within the last few weeks and is quite the hot topic. We explored campus and ate a picnic lunch before continuing back on our journey.

We arrived in Gatlinburg, but it was too early to check-in to our cabin, so we went to the Aquarium to pick up our tickets my parents bought us online for the Titanic Museum (I know, strange... Everything's owned by Ripley's, so it makes sense, really). We had to pay $10 for parking just to pick up our tickets, but we ended up getting them and finally made it to our cabin, Mountain Blessing, in Pigeon Forge.

We rested for a bit, unpacked, and made dinner. We decided to venture back to Pigeon Forge and explore a little more. We went to the Christmas Place, a little village there, and to a souvenir shop called Live Sharks, because we wanted to see if they did, indeed, have live sharks. They did have a small one in a tank, but it was kind of anticlimactic.

Back at our cabin, we had our own little devotions/worship time.

Day 2 - Sunday
We woke up and made breakfast before leaving for our 10 a.m. reservation at the Titanic Museum. It was really neat! The building is made to look like the ship, and we were each given a card with a person's name who was on the Titanic. I was Elizabeth Nye, a second class passenger whose life was stricken with tragedy. Good news--I survived! Andrew was Dr. John Simpson, a doctor who checked third class passengers for lice and health inspection. He died. =( The museum was really neat, though. They had lots of artifacts and actors to help tell the story. They also built a replica of the grand staircase, which was beautiful. Many of the artifacts were found on the bodies in the ocean (yuck!) and floating debris after the sinking. There was also a room where you could touch the 28 degree water, which is how cold the water was that night. My hand hurt after a few seconds, but many people stayed in the water 4 hours until the rescue ship came.

After that, we found some parking at the entrance to Gatlinburg--$5 for all day! Much cheaper than yesterday. We ate our lunch and walked to the Aquarium. We really liked it here! Andrew's favorite parts were the stingrays you could pet (and he touched a baby shark, even though the lady kept telling him not to). He also liked walking through the clear tunnel, where all kinds of fish and sharks were around us. There was also a giant sea turtle! My favorite parts were the jellyfish and the penguins.

After that, we walked through the town of Gatlinburg. There were lots of little shops and souvenir places. We went taste-testing at several places giving out free samples of hot sauces and salsa! At the Pepper Palace, Andrew tried this extremely hot ghost pepper salsa and got a sticker for trying it. He started sweating, though, and drank a lot of water! We also went to a place where they make Moonshine, which we found out is whiskey. We saw the process of how it is made--pretty cool.

We sat down and decided what we wanted to do for dinner. We had planned on going out this night since it was our anniversary. We were discussing some of the local restaurants when Andrew decided we should call and see about pricing to see a dinner show. I had been to the Dixie Stampede years ago, and when we called we found out we could get a great deal on front row tickets! So we went to the Dixie Stampede for dinner. We got smoothies in this cowboy boot cups while we listened to a pre-dinner bluegrass band (Andrew was on a blue grass kick after that--don't let him fool you). When we went in for the show, we saw horse-riding and singing and dancing. We picked to sit on the "north" side, since it is kind of a play up of the Civil War. Andrew said since he's dark-skinned he probably shouldn't sit in the south. =) But it's all in good fun. The food was great. We had vegetable soup, sweet tea served in a Mason Jar, a cheese biscuit, a whole roasted chicken (my favorite part!), ham, a potato, corn on the cob, and an apple turnover for dessert--all to eat with our hands!

We were SO full when it was over that was over that we went to walk around the Old Mill town. There was a dam built where the water used to turn the mill wheel, but it made for a pretty picture.

After a very busy day, we went back to the cabin and rested in the hot tub. We slept very well that night!

Day 3 - Monday
We slept in on Monday and took our time making breakfast and waking up. We made biscuits and gravy--yum! Then we went to an exhibit Christ in the Smokies. It was interesting. There were 12 dioramas set up with mannequins (they looked a little creepy) depicting the story of Jesus. At the end, there was a garden with a sculpture of Jesus that, because of the way it is carved, seems to be looking at you no matter where you walk. It was well-done, but in my opinion, it did not reflect the power of God nearly as much as what we saw when we went into the Smoky Mountain National Park.

The first thing we did was drive through Cade's Cove. This is a valley in the park where there are a lot of historical buildings and landmarks. There were several stops throughout the drive, including a little church. There was a park worker there who told us a little bit about the church, and how a lot of the churches were divided as to who to support in the Civil War so they would split and there would be two Methodist Churches, and two Baptist churches in the area. In fact, for two years during the Civil War all churches stopped meeting in that area because of the dissension. We also discovered the way that Gatlinburg got its name was because there was a man in town who owned a store and started a church. His church failed because he was a disliked man and few people would support him. The town officials went to him and asked him what it would take to get him out of town. He said, Buy out my store and name the town after me. The man's name was Rev. Gatlin, and the town previously known as White Oak Flats is now named Gatlinburg. We also explored another old mill town, but actually got to see how the mill works, which was cool. On our way out of Cade's Cove we saw a bear! A ranger was trying to keep it from coming onto the driving path, but I could not get a picture. We also saw a snake while we were walking around there. Eek!

After that, it was getting late. We had planned on going hiking but didn't want it to get dark before we could get back, so we went souvenir shopping instead. I got a snowglobe for my collection, and Andrew got some hot sauce from the Moonshine place. We also bought some goodies for our parents at the homemade candy shops (where we also did some fudge testing)!

We went back to our cabin and ate dinner, and we ate our cake from our wedding. My mom had frozen it and saran wrapped it--and it still tasted great! It was the most we had eaten of our wedding cake since we only at the bite we shoved in each other's faces at the wedding! After that, we relaxed and packed up.

Day 4 - Tuesday
We woke up and packed up. I burnt the bacon for breakfast and left a lovely stench in the cabin (oops)! We loaded up the car and went for one last adventure. We wanted to hike a trail to a waterfall. We drove to a trailhead that was labeled "strenuous." We decided it was worth the adventure, plus we would be in the car most of the day. It was a 2.7 mile trail to rainbow falls. What it didn't say was that it was 2.7 miles incline the whole way there. By the time we reached the summit we had climbed over 1,000 ft. in elevation! We were pooped! It was definitely a beautiful walk and a beautiful payoff. The climb down was less strenuous, but we were still sore--and will be even more sore tomorrow, I'm sure!

After that, we went back to the car and headed home. It was a wonderful vacation. We had a lot of fun and feel very refreshed. Now back to work....