Guest post by ashleyk
Map tips: each color represents a different day. Click a marker to learn more about the spot, and click the star in the map header to save the entire map under Your Places in Google Maps.
Day 1
- Ripley’s Aquarium of the Smokies
- Carver’s Applehouse Restaurant
We did the “Penguin Encounter” tour at Ripley’s, which was really cool. We were taken into a separate room where we got to pet and interact with a live penguin. We also did the “Splash with the Stingrays” tour. We got to suit up in a wet suit, and get in the stingray tank and pet the stingrays. Both were awesome experiences. Carver’s has the best apple fritters! Really great southern comfort food!
Day 2
- ClimbWorks
We ziplined down the side of one of the Smoky Mountains. Really fun, and absolutely beautiful, especially if you are able to there first thing in the morning (while it’s still dark) to see the sun come up over the Mountains! The ziplining tour guides/staff were so friendly! I wish we had had time to go back and do the ziplining at night as well. From what we were told, it’s very different from ziplining during the day, and it’s a blast.
Day 3
- Parrot Mountain and Gardens
- Dollywood Water Park
Parrot Mntn is a very cool place! There is nothing else like it! They had a ton of exotic birds that you could get close to. They even had a part of the tour where you could feed and handle some of the birds. Dollywood is really fun! We spent the afternoon, on the slides and different water rides.
Day 4
- The Island at Pigeon Forge
- Mellow Mushroom Pizzeria
Neat area. It has a large ferris wheel (The Great Smoky Mountain Wheel), musical water fountain (with light show at night), different little shops to visit and restaurants to eat at. Mellow mushroom pizza is so good!
Day 5
- Titanic Museum
- Wonder Works
- The Incredible Christmas Place
- Bennett’s Pit Bar-B-Que
At the beginning of the tour at Titanic Museum, they give each visitor a “ticket”. This has an actual passenger’s name and information that was really on the Titanic. They had a listening device that you carried with you during the tour, so you could listen to different recordings that pertained to different information. It was nice that you take the tour at your own pace. Wonder Works is really a neat place. A lot of science stuff. Christmas Place has every kind of ornament and decoration you can think of. Bennett’s has amazing barbeque food!
Day 6
- Downtown Gatlinburg
They have a great fireworks show for the Fourth of July in the center of downtown Gatlinburg! We got there a few hours early, and spent time visiting all of the different shops in the area. We were able to walk to everything, and they had a few different restaurants so we were able to eat dinner there before the fireworks started.
Traveled in July 2016
Leave a reply