Knoxville, Oak Ridge and Dollywood

Guess where this was taken? The Tennessee Tornado at Dollywood. Do you see the camera in Max's hand? Well, this picture got us in trouble.

 It seems they don't allow cameras on the ride, nor do they allow pictures. Patti purchased this photo taken by the park and later on another roller coaster we handed the picture and some other things to the attendants for them to hold until the ride was over. The attendant saw the camera in Max's hand, noticed the camera had not been handed to her and proceeded to insist Max give up the camera. They were not going to start the ride until he handed the camera over. After the ride, before giving the camera back, the attendant made Max show her the pictures and made Max delete those taken while on the ride itself. Oh darn, because Max actually did a video of the ride.....

Here is one picture of the Tennessee Tornado, taken before the ride started, so we were allowed to keep it. We rode almost all the roller coasters, including the water rides. What fun.

 

Walking along we saw this huge sandwich. It is a bologna sandwich. The guy who ordered it was trying to figure out how he was going to eat it. It had to have been 4 inches high at least.

This was our favorite ride though, the water toboggan

Sorry I don't have any pictures of the 4 of us sledding down, but a water toboggan starts by them actually weighing you. It requires a minimum of 480 pounds to keep it stable and the optimum weight is between 650 and 700. We came in at 695. Boy did we sail down the tubes. This is the only ride we did twice.

 Although I have no pictures, we did go to several shows including the main show about the Smokey Mountains with 8 songs written by Dolly herself. We all decided it was much better than the outdoor drama we saw at Cherokee. We also saw a glass blower making a candy dish and various other craft shops and listened to some bluegrass music as well.

 

We also went downtown one evening to listen to free music at the Art Museum. It was billed as Bluesy Americana. It was sort of a country blues. The acoustics was lousy and they were very loud. I enjoyed it, but several of the others came, listened for only a few minutes and left.

And of course we spent one day at Oak Ridge. Oak Ridge is where they developed the Atomic Bomb. Although final assembly and testing was in NM, most of the research and development was right here.

 But although they had one of the best museums on the history and timeline of WWII, my favorite exhibit was this poster on the human body. I wanted to purchase a poster but they were out. Did you know that when you sneeze you expel air at up to 100 mph and all other bodily functions stop momentarily, even your heart? It was things like this I thought was great.

But what was most fascinating was how Oak Ridge was kept such a secret. A town where 90,000 people lived at one point. The entire town was created in months. And because of the dire need to develop the bomb quickly, they didn't have time to test it and refine it and such like what goes on today. They created in less than 2 years what would probably take 2 decades with all our OSHA laws and such now. I would highly recommend taking the tour if you are ever in the area.