Southern Vaca Day 5a: Salt & Pepper Shaker Museum

Tuesday was our 5th day of vacation and it started off with a lazy morning playing in (and around) the cabin...

Having some porches to play on during our vacation was perfect for the little guys.  They loved to go outside to rock in the chairs, swing on the porch swing and they could not stop asking us begging us to go in the hot tub.

Can I take your order?

Eventually we gave in and despite this picture, they were both thrilled!

Chillin' with cartoons.

Eric tried to capture just how steep the driveway to our cabin was.

At around 9:30 we left the cabin to begin our adventures of the day.  Today, we wanted to make sure we got to see the world's only Salt & Pepper Shaker Museum in Gatlinburg, since it was only open for four hours every day.  With a half hour to spare before it opened, we made a stop to check out Santa's Claus-et along the way.  It was a fairly large log cabin filled with Christmas things to buy.   I could have spent quite a while in there but since my boys insisted on touching everything and Asher is getting to the age that he thinks we need to purchase things everywhere we go, we did not stay long.

Video: Rollercoastin' down the cabin's driveway!

From Santa's Claus-et we headed over to the museum, unsure of what we would find, but for $3 per adult and no charge for the kids we were willing to give it a shot.  What we found though was awesome...really, it was!  We took our time walking through the museum and checking out the over 20,000 salt and pepper shaker pairs.  It was pretty incredible.  There were sections for different themes, and every type of shaker imaginable.  Some had intricate details and even moved or made noises (we were told).  If you want to "tour" the museum as well, you can simply click here, although it is way more impressive and fun to explore in person if you ever make it to Gatlinburg, TN!

I talked to some people after our vacation and they were shocked that we were willing to take our two young kiddos to a place with so many breakable objects.  Truth be told, it never even occurred to me until we got there.  Then in the first room that we went in it was filled with all plastic shakers behind a thin sheet of plexiglass.  It dawned on me then that we may have a problem when I caught Avery banging on the plastic and feared something would break.  As we continued on though to the non-plastic shakers (which is about 95% of the ones there), I was happy to see that they were all safely located behind thick sheets of glass, so no worries! :)

We were told that the shakers with the large S and P on them walked.

According to the Museum guide, the little Butler shaker sneezes when you shake him and the little maid shaker says "Bless You" when you shake her

I loved all the detail of all these little appliances!

So cute!

My favorites was the ice cream collection.  They were so cute!

Asher got a little bored as Eric and I tried to soak in all of the different designs, details, etc., so I gave him my phone and told him it was his job to take pictures of the museum so that we could remember what we saw.  Thus, here are pictures from Eric, Asher and I of all we saw...

I liked the little Earth sitting on a chair of stars.

Before we left, we checked out the shakers for sale, but none of them really caught my eye enough to spend the money they were asking.  I did like the spaceship and moon though...

"ba"

"silly monkeys"

Long story made shore, the Salt & Pepper Shaker Museum was some of the best $6 we have every spent!