The Tennessee River winds through the Chattanooga area and its surrounding massive limestone bluffs. We were hoping to get a boat ride while visiting here so we could check out the local gorges so we got onto the ‘net and started searching. The Chattanooga Aquarium used to run a boat called the Gorge Explorer that went into these gorges but they discontinued the tours in January. Drat! We fell back onto a riverboat called the Southern Belle which advertises great views of the area and takes off from the area near the aquarium.
Unfotunately, Chattanooga is hosting an ironman competition this Saturday and all the roads into the aquarium neighborhood were blocked. We ended up parking some distance away which certainly did nothing for my mood because the walk over to the boat passed through about 90 degree temperatures and 90 percent humidity. I was quite soggy by the time I made it to the boat. They told us to arrive an hour early and we almost did it but once we got there we found we could not board the boat for half an hour. They stored us in an adjacent overpriced gift shop with dreadful calliope music playing on an endless loop. Playing Chattanooga Choo Choo on a calliope is a loathsome concept and inappropriate for everyone except the stone deaf.
We finally got onto the boat but the listed departure time passed without the boat moving. Upon query, I was informed that we were going to be privileged to be accompanied by some 200 children who arrived late. About 20 minutes later and with most of the vermin aboard, we departed the dock but soon found we would be returning to the dock to pick up some particularly late straggling parents and their little unruly charges. The kids looked like they were between 10 and 12 years old and they were all at a particularly obnoxious phase in their young lives. They were either blocking the exits or staircases, fixated on their phones or screaming in an attempt to contact their compatriots at the opposite end of the boat. They were of a perfect size to toss over the railings into the river. The actual tour was shortened due to untimely rugrat arrivals and extra dock stops so our trip ended up being a slow trip about 4 miles down river and one mile upriver from the dock. No gorges were entered and by the time our $25 a head ride was over we had seen about the same as we could have seen from the dock. About the only really dramatic views were of Chattanooga’s beautiful riverside museum of modern art and aquarium, both perched on the limestone bluffs adjacent to the Tennessee River. I would not recommend this attraction. However, we did spot an advertisement for YeeHaw beer downtown. Never heard of this brand.
We elected to split from the riverfront and returned to Raccoon Mountain where the TVA has built a massive reservoir at the top. They use excess power (like at night) from their dams to pump water into the Raccoon Mountain Reservoir and then let it descend through penstocks to feed turbines when additional power is needed. We spotted several deer and some successfully fishing osprey along the way. The reservoir, hydro plant and pumping system were pretty good, too.
We got a few pix. Click here

Today we started our exploration of Chattanooga by driving up Lookout Mountain which looms over the city’s southwest corner. We wound up a skinny and circuitous path from close to the Tennessee River all the way to the ridge where we found Point Park, part of the National Park Service’s Chickamauga and Chattanooga Military Park that has preserved the battlefields where some pivotal battles happened in the Civil War.
Point Park is the only facility within park properties where a fee is collected to enter but we have a geezer pass that allowed us entry without cost. Regardless of cost, the views from this promontory of Chattanooga and the surrounding terrain are spectacular. There is a beautiful monument within the park that has both a Federal and a Confederate soldier at the top. That is enough to keep it from getting removed by some do-gooders. The serpentine Tennessee River can be seen winding through way far below Chattanooga and emerald green countryside. Looking south, we could see into Georgia. The Confederacy had 10 and 12 pound cannons perched on the edges of this promontory and that must have been rough on Federal troops as they approached Chattanooga. The Feds wanted this crucial city because the river and four rail lines converge in what used to be a manufacturing and transit crossroads in 1862. The Feds ultimately prevailed and it was the death knell for the south.
Leaving the park, we drove south down a long road called Scenic Drive into Georgia and their Cloudland Canyon State Park. It was a great drive through magnificent estates with great views and the park is gorgeous but we had a reality moment when we saw some poor bozo’s fifth wheel trailer which he took under a bridge lower than the trailer height. It was a catastrophic error. We have encountered numerous bridges in Tennessee that have clearances in their underpasses substantially less than the US DOT requirement of 13′-6”. Keep your eyes peeled around here if driving vehicles taller than Hobbits.
From above, Chattanooga looked beautiful, almost peaceful. However, once we drove into town reality set in and we were plunged into a confusing maze of streets, none of which went where we wanted to go. Since we are out of out-of-towners, it was more problematic for us to get around than it may be for locals but the streets seem to point in all directions with no ordinary intersections or reason.
We finally decided to head back toward our camping spot at Raccoon Mountain but on the way we spotted another wrecked RV, this time a motor home that was completely demolished above the tires from windshield all the way to the formerly attractive bathroom. Too many low bridges around here for sleepy drivers.
We took a few pictures along the way and you can see them if you click here

Our travels continued today with our departure from Winchester where we got on US-64 for a bit before transitioning onto I-24 toward Chattanooga. We have finally made it to the Appalachians! We could tell because our GPS unit, which also gives us elevation, indicated we were climbing. The substantial humps to the east of us might have been a clue, as well. Not long after we spotted the mountains we were in them, crossing a pass at 1919 feet before descending into Chattanooga.
Right before we got into town, we turned off and pulled our Barbarian Invader into the Raccoon Mountain RV Park. It is quite a nice park with cable TV, great wifi, full hookups, a pool, lots of nearby attractions and a steep price compared to most places we go. Since we get to stay in Thousand Trails campgrounds regularly and we stay in them for free, it seems possible I am being a crybaby about the price here. We’ll see.

We did not get a lot of exploring done today. We mostly acted like slugs with a couple of exceptions. We did the hour or two of work we normally do to prepare for travel. We also went to the local library in Winchester so Peggy could round up some legal documents off the internet since wifi at our campground is NFG.
Not far from the library, we found a restaurant called Holt’s Diner. They have daily specials and today’s special was chicken fried steak, a dish I have been known to devour from time to time. The kitchen served us up two plates of chicken fried steak with three side dishes for $6.95 plus $.80 per side. We had good cornbread, some tasty little spheres of corn wossname deep fried and mashed potatoes and gravy. Peggy was extravagant and got a fourth side of green beans. The chicken fried steaks were terrific and between us all the sides disappeared. We heartily suggest travelers passing through this part of the country stop and dine here. I give it an A+. They are closed Mondays and open at 11:00 AM the rest of the time. We finished off the day with a fuel stop and a stroll down to the lake next to our campground. They have a nice wooden swinging chair where we spent some very idle time gazing out over the lake. This is a tough existence.

Today we took ourselves on an educational field trip to the Jack Daniel’s Distillery in nearby Lynchburg. I have been indirectly funding the pension plan at this venerable company for some 40 years and we figured we might as well see where all the money went. After a drive on roads that follow the terrain and point in all directions except the direction we intended to go, we arrived at the distillery and headed into the visitor center and museum where we purchased tickets to go on one of their three categories of tour. We bought the pricey one ($25 a head) which included the tour and some tastings of a variety of products.
The walking part of the tour takes interested visitors past an EPA-approved rick burner with a smoke stack scrubber. They make their charcoal here from almost incinerated white oak. The guide told us that the essential criteria for Tennessee sipping whiskey is a corn mash, malted barley and rye grain mixture and the passage of every drop of alcohol through not less than a 10′ column of charcoal. The tour then heads over to a big grotto in the adjacent cliff side where there is a spring that produces abundant clear and tasteless water without any iron or other nasty things in the liquid. Visitors can try the water at a number of on-site drinking fountains.
Then we headed into the grain mill and the fermenting buildings that are adjacent to two large and two small distillation towers that collectively produce 100 gallons of 140-proof alcohol per minute. A bit of this product is used to ignite the ricks of white cedar for even incineration but the rest of it is sent on into the plant where it re-mixed with water to get the alcohol content down to where folks like it. We wandered through the fermentation section where strong odors and high temperatures were encountered. The fermentation puts off so much heat that they are required to refrigerate the fermentation tanks to keep the mash from turning into crummy-tasting corn meal.
We popped into the bottling line for Gentleman Jack (twice through the charcoal) but, since it was Sunday, they were not operating this little moneymaker. After distillation, the management diverts a little of the product to make small runs of specialty whiskey with honey or molasses or cinnamon for those requiring weird whiskey.
The tour was great fun, the tasting was okay but amounts provided were slim but, on the whole, we had a good time despite the very warm weather which had me sweating like a whore in church.
We left the distillery and headed into the town of Lynchburg which is actually a few 19th and early 20th century buildings built around the city hall located at the middle of the square. Peggy made a foray into the general store to buy Jack Daniel’s stuff and emerged soon after not too much poorer. On the way out of town we could see one of the distillery’s barrel houses where their products are aged. They have 89 seven story barrel houses on the property which hold a million gallons each. That’s 89 million gallons in storage. Nice long-term asset.
We got some photos. Check them out by clicking here

At 0600 hours this morning, we were treated to a recorded version of the national anthem right before about 50 speedy and very noisy bass boats blasted off into a fishing tournament. They departed from the docks in our park, not far from our sloping campsite. However, after coffee we were back in exploration mode so we took a blind orientation drive in the areas around Winchester. This part of Tennessee is quite hilly and lots of creeks snake across the landscape. Everything is bright green. The roads are okay in most places. It is pretty. We started by driving into downtown Winchester, across the lake from our campground. Right away we spotted some absolutely architecturally gorgeous residences right on the main drag. As a matter of fact, we were pretty dazzled by the abundance of spectacular old homes there are in this part of the world. Folks must be rich around here.
We passed through a town called Estill Springs before getting to Tullahoma where George Dickel Mash Whiskey is made. We drove a nice, serpentine path into a narrow valley, which locals here spell as “hollow” and pronounce “holler,” where we found the distillery and also spotted a male scarlet tanager starting to sport his extravagant breeding plumage. He was fully pimped out. We get to add him to our list of first time sightings of birds we never see in the West.
After the distillery, we meandered through the towns of Normandy and Wartrace. Much joking went on about “Never seen a wart race. Mine all hold still” and other similar droll comments. Wartrace has a bunch of really spectacular old and new residential structures and they are quite pretty. After Wartrace, we headed for Manchester and its beautiful Old Stone Fort State Park. It is pretty country but it seems more suited for folks with little trailers. I wouldn’t want to go in there with our 34 footer. We cut from Manchester back to our RV park in Winchester by passing through the Arnold Air Force Base but we didn’t see any air forces.
See the pix. Click here

Yesterday we did very little except prep to leave Natchez Trace Thousand Trails for more fun to the east. Today we departed this large campground. The scenery and wildlife and most of the folks were great but management loves to mow the huge expanses of grass at the crack of dawn prior to our normal wake-up and in the evening when the dry soil and pollen can emanate from the mowers’ exhausts as giant clouds of asthma. The one jerk we met was a fellow Californian who, in a fit of ineptitude, ran over our bird feeder with his RV while his phone-fascinated spouse watched without doing anything until it was too late. Jerks.
We drove a bit south from the campground before we got on venerable US-64 and we stayed on it all the way to Winchester where we pulled into Winchester City Park almost right downtown. There are massive ball fields, a lake right across the road, lots of folks having fun, no wifi, no sewer and shaky RV spots. We got into the only one that was long enough to take our 34′ trailer but it runs uphill pretty steeply so we are camping on a bit of a slant. As long as I keep my feet on the floor of the RV, my nifty swivel chair stays right where I want it. If I lift my feet, the casters take the chair right to the bathroom/restroom passageway closer to the front of the rig.

For the last two days we have been tied up with making camping reservations but were handicapped by being unable to find locales where we had both WiFi and phone coverage. Our phone will sometimes work in one spot when we drive up the hill from our campsite. Unfortunately, the WiFi only works adequately when inside one of the campground buildings but none of them are built where the phone works. We made our best headway when we drove about 15 miles over to Hohenwald and stopped in at the public library for their free Wifi. Even the library wanted cell phone calls limited to outside or in one interior corridor. That newfangled fancy-schmancy communication stuff is not a priority in this region.
Today we jumped into the truck and took off going north toward Nashville which sits on the edge of the Cumberland River. Nashville is a city with a long history of Country Western music, a genre I personally find soul-suckingly distressing. However, lots of folks here in Tennessee do like this type of music which includes yodeling, tone-deaf harmonizing, twanging and unique pronunciations of common English words. Lots of the alleged musical artists seem to wear cowboy hats although I don’t think many of them have ever seen a cow, grasslands or a horse. I didn’t spot any wearing fuzzy chaps.
Certainly one of the Meccas for this type of music is the Grand Old Opry which I believe is a reference to an opera of some sort. I used to see quaint little concerts on TV broadcast from the Grand Old Opry as I switched them off in my youth. I always envisioned the Opry as being an ordinary theater-type venue, maybe sandwiched between two low-rise masonry buildings in a downtown area with very narrow streets. Nothing could be further from reality. The Grand Old Opry building at a place called Gaylord Opryland is enormous and looks like the main auditorium should seat not less than 4000. The backstage area looks like the loading docks at a Walmart distribution center. There is an affiliated hotel called the Gaylord Opryland Resort next door that may be the largest hotel I have ever seen. Even the mega-resorts in Vegas are dwarfed by this monster. The complex has its own freeway offramp.
Fortunately for both Peggy and me, we were unable to go in for a sample of the caterwauling because we had to floss. We drove around the Nashville area and spotted some magnificent estates that can only be called modern plantations. Nashville’s downtown area is accessed through a series of beltline freeways with many left-side exit ramps requiring multiple quick lane changes and universally crummy paving. It is challenging for ignorant, elderly types.
On the way back from Nashville, we decided to swing through Leiper’s Fork again before heading back south on the Trace. There are some great historical buildings and some gorgeous modern plantations nearby and we loved the back country cruise before jumping onto the Trace where we spotted not less than 15 wild turkeys.
We got a few pictures along the way. To see them, click here

Today we took a spin over to a city called Columbia. There are many antebellum homes and plantation residences in the area and we spotted quite a few in town. There are substantial renovations in progress in the buildings surrounding the main square and city hall. The little main square is surrounded by historic masonry structures occupied by coffee shops, a record store, bakeries and the usual cute downtown stuff. Many of the nearby houses are quite pretty and well-maintained, a treat for architecture buffs like me.
Columbia is also a place where there has been a long history of discrimination against those without milk-white skin, continuing a long history of lynching right up until the Korean War. It seems those that shriek the most about liberty are the first to deprive others of their right to a fair trial by their peers before burning their houses, exercising them at the end of a chain behind pickup trucks and ultimately stringing them up. Assholes.
Columbia also has one of the two still-existing houses where James Knox Polk, 11th President of the United States, lived. He also lived in the White House. Here he lived in a nice but not massive downtown corner house in Columbia from 1818 to 1824 and we swung in for a glimpse. Polk’s second house was quite a bit smaller than our current prez’s second residence.
This is another time when we have gone to the alleged residences of famous Americans and found that almost all of the houses were actually the places that George Washington, James Polk, Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis temporarily occupied, some of them staying as little as three months. Therefore, there can be many houses for George Washington, et al. We found the same to be true for the oldest house in the U.S.A., of which we have been to three.
Lotsa gorgeous birds here. We also spotted a coyote. I didn’t know there were coyotes in Tennessee.
See the pictures from today by clicking here

We drove a loop west of our camping space at Natchez Trace TT today. There were no real towns that we passed through but we understand the area is called Buffalo Valley. I am not even sure what route we took but we did notice that the roadside scenery was beautiful and there was some good Americana along the highway.
Americana pix included. Click here