Titanic Museum – Meanderings & Mind Munchies

We began our day with a visit to the Titanic Museum in Pigeon Forge.

As we entered the museum, the staff — excuse me, “crewmen” — gave each of us a card with the name and statistics of one of the passengers on the Titanic.

I loved this idea because it gave us a personal connection to one of the passengers. As we continued through the tour, we tried to figure out whether our passenger had survived.

The first floor held artifacts and stories about the building of the Titanic, the layout, and the passengers. We weren’t allowed to take pictures on this floor, but it was extremely interesting and informative.

Then we went up to the next floor, where there were recreations of some of the Titanic’s rooms.

At the end of the tour, we got to find out what had happened to our particular passenger.

Since Greg’s passenger was one of the musicians, he played until the Titanic sank and perished along with the ship. My passenger was a 17-year-old girl, who survived and lived until the ripe old age of 81.

On our way out, we descended the grand staircase.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

After a quick lunch back at the camper, we headed to the Sugarlands Visitor Center for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Gatlinburg.

We talked to the park ranger about hiking opportunities within the park. Since neither of us was up to actually hiking today, we decided to drive around the park to get a feel for what we might like to do in the coming days.

The views were spectacular!

Greg decided he wanted to drive Newfound Gap Road, which is about 13 miles long.

We kept seeing light blue trees on top of the mountain. Greg thought the color was caused by clouds, and I wondered whether they were a special type of tree.