A mountain retreat from the Texas heat

A mountain retreat from the Texas heat

During the summer of 1980, smack in the middle of that recording-setting 42-day stretch of 100-plus degrees, I ventured into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park for the first time. And it was bliss: During the drive through the rich forest up Newfound Gap Road, the temperatures slowly dropped into the 60s as the elevation increased to nearly a mile. In the 32 years since, I've not forgotten the utter relief I experienced that July day.

Regardless of whether we endure another scorcher this summer, my advice is to head for those chill hills when it's too warm here. I returned for the first time last month, finding their solace and beauty every bit as transformative as all those summers ago. What's more, I found a lot more to do near the park this time, thanks to the vast development of Pigeon Forge.

One of Tennessee's gateway towns to the national park, Pigeon Forge distinguishes itself with a pairing of attractions you won't find anywhere else: The world's largest Titanic museum, of all things, sits in this little tourist town, and Dollywood, Dolly Parton's wildly popular theme park, resides here, as well. Visits to both should be made now, as the centennial of the great ship's sinking is marked April 15, and the iconic country music star has just opened a remarkable roller coaster at her place.

If you want to be among the smart travelers fleeing the heat this summer, plan this trip before rooms sell out. Here's a plan of attack for a trip you're sure to remember two or three decades down the road.

Board the Titanic museum

Granted, the town of Pigeon Forge screams "tourist trap" in some corners, what with a proliferation of country music variety shows and comedy dinner theater, plus a startling abundance of pancake cafes. That makes the sophistication of Titanic -- subtitled "the world's largest museum attraction" -- all the more remarkable. (And clever, too, as 11 million people drive down the Parkway, Pigeon Forge's main drag and Titanic's locale, each year.)

Upon entry, you receive a boarding pass bearing the name of an actual Titanic passenger or crew member, one of the 2,208 men, women or children who boarded the ship in Southampton, England, on April 10, 1912; Cherbourg, France, later that same date; or Queenstown, Ireland, on April 11. In the two or three hours you're touring the museum, you see much of what that person saw, heard and learned before the ship struck the fatal iceberg late on April 14. At the end of your time in Titanic, you will visit the Memorial Room to find out what happened in the frigid waters before dawn April 15 to the person whose name you've been holding.

Each turn you take in the 20 galleries within this 30,000-square-foot building shaped like a ship makes you forget you're in a museum. The front half of the place is a re-creation, but half the size of the original. In each room, passage and deck, you're enthralled with hundreds of artifacts, each carried off the ship by its passengers and crew members or recovered from the sea at the time of its sinking, during the rescue work.

That these pieces of jewelry, record logs, letters, clothing, furniture, luggage, dishes and much more have survived seems miraculous. Perhaps more impressive, the collection of photographs taken by Father Francis Browne, a Jesuit priest from Ireland who sailed on Titanic just between the English and Irish ports at the outset, provide a look at people and scenes on the ship not found anywhere else. Stories of passengers -- not just the famous ones, like Margaret "the unsinkable Molly" Brown of Denver and John Jacob Astor IV -- and their ordeal can't be seen as anything less than fascinating.

Interactive displays keep younger visitors entertained. You can learn to send a wireless SOS signal, and you can stand on a deck in the freezing night air, touching a mountain of ice that imitates the one that sank Titanic and sticking your hand in icy water like that in which the unlucky souls who didn't get on a lifeboat perished.

Among the astounding reproductions of some of the ship's sections, including cabins and staterooms, none impresses more than the grand first-class staircase that connected A-Deck and B-Deck. An exact copy, made from Titanic's builders' plans, lets you walk up and down the stairs beneath that famous wrought iron-and-glass dome where Jack watched Rose descend in the James Cameron movie.

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