Hey y'all!
Tennessee is a place we keep going back to. We have visited several times now, and every trip seems to teach us something new. Most of our time there has been spent around Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg, and Sevierville, with a trip over to Nashville too. I wanted to gather some of our favorite stops into one post. We will keep adding to it as we go back, because we always seem to find one more thing we want to see.
On our Nashville trip, we visited the Parthenon. We have only made it there once so far. It is a full size copy of the Parthenon in Greece, right in the middle of Nashville, and seeing it in person gave us a lot to talk about with the history behind the original. We filmed that visit too, so you can find our Tennessee Parthenon video on our travel resources page if you want a closer look.
Back on the Pigeon Forge side of the state, we visited the Titanic Museum. History you can walk through sticks with you, and the stories of the people on that ship gave us plenty to think about and talk through afterward.
We also went through Truth Traveler and the planetarium. If you have followed us for long, you know we love finding places that help us teach our family about God's creation, and we were glad to find this one.
And a Tennessee trip would not feel complete for us without mini golf. We always like to find a course and play while we are there. It is simple, but some of our favorite family time on these trips has happened on a mini golf course.
We went to Dollywood on our last trip, and even at a theme park we were able to find some history. There is a little chapel there and a working blacksmith shop, and we enjoyed slowing down to take those in between everything else.
We stayed in Sevierville on that trip. Most people know it as the town you pass through on the way to Pigeon Forge, but it has a story of its own. Sevierville is named for John Sevier, a Revolutionary War hero and the first governor of Tennessee. I have been learning more about him, and I am planning a comic on him, so keep an eye out for that one.
We also stopped in at Buc-ee's on this trip. It was our first time visiting one. If you have never been in one, it is worth the wander. The place is huge, and we had fun just walking the aisles. The drive home took us up I-40 east toward Asheville, with the big Sevierville Buc-ee's in view across the highway.
Things we hope to do next time
Visit the Bible museum. We stumbled on a Bible museum on this last trip and wanted to go through it, but we did not have time to do any of it. That is at the top of our list for the next trip.
We also hope to visit Athens, Tennessee, where the Battle of Athens took place. That is a piece of history we would love to see where it happened and learn more about.
That's it for now! We hope this gives your family some ideas for your own Tennessee trip. If you have a favorite stop we have not found yet, let us know. We are always looking for new places to wander.
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