Wednesday: Pigeon Forge and Cade's Cove

On Tuesday I took delivery of a new Data Card from Verizon and it seems work ok, so life is more rosy now. We can move on from Chattanooga.
Drove to Pigeon Forge on Wednesday and found a nice campground called Creekside RV. We have a spot just by the little creek.
Thursday we took a day trip to Cades Cove, it was beautiful scenery. Too many people though.
Came back on the road from Cades Cove to Gatlinburg. That road is really spectacular as it runs alongside a stream which has lots of rapids and water falls.

The Indecisive Battle of CHickamauga

On Sunday we toured the battlefield of Chickamauga (they pronounce it Chicka-mugger).
This was the site of one of the biggest battles of the Civil War. A Union army, led by General Rosencrans had forced the Confederate army, led by General Bragg, to retreat to South East to Chattanooga, then to abandon the town only to make a stand south of Chattanooga at Chickamauga. On 19th September 1863 Bragg ordered an offensive to take place against the Union on the next day. Braggs orders were misunderstood or went astray, so only part of the offensive happened, with mixed results. However on the Union side there were also mix ups, which left a gap in the defences, which were capitalised on by the Confederates. It ended up with the Union army retreating to Chattanooga and the Confederate army winning the day on the battlefield, but not defeating the Union. So they lay siege to Chattanooga for 2 months. It was a stalemate, however it gave time for the Union to strengthen its forces and for the Confederates position to become weaker. In November the Union advanced and defeated the confederates at the battle of Missionary Ridge (also the skirmish on top of Lookout Mountain). Bragg was forced to retreat and the road to the south lay open for Sherman. The next summer he advanced and took Atlanta, by Christmas he had marched Eastwards to Savannah, then North to Lafayette, where in March he defeated General Johnston at Bentonville and accepted his surrender at Bennetts Farm, Durham in April of 1865. The final act of the war.

Da,di, da,di, da, da. Pardon Me Boy

We have arrived in the land of the Choo Choo! Chattanooga. The name is synonymous with Glenn Miller and his big band from the 30’s, so I expected to see a small town with an Art Deco station. How wrong. Chattanooga is a large industrial town, built on the Tennessee River. It is a crossroads for east to west and north to south roads and rail, as well as being a port. The traffic is awful. Because of its position it became the focus for an important battle in the Civil War. Once the town had fallen it was the supply depot and starting point for Sherman’s attack on Atlanta and his March To The Sea. It is, however, good to know that the famous railway station is still there and preserved as a hotel. We spent a pleasant afternoon riding the electric trolley from the Riverside area to the Choo Choo Hotel and exploring its shops, antique carriages, which are now hotel rooms, lobby and restaurants. The whole building and railyard had been renovated as a very posh hotel. It very nicely reflected the mood evoked by Glenn Millers music.
We started our visit on Saturday by going to Lookout Mountain, which is a 2000 ft finger of a mountain that stands above Chattanooga. There is a National Memorial Park on the point as a memorial to the ‘Battle above the Clouds’ which formed part of the battle to break the siege a couple of months after the battle of Chickamauga. The view of Chattanooga is quite amazing, you can see the Tennessee River snaking away to the North, the flat uplands of the Cumberland Plateau to the West and North. Across the North East you can dimly see the Blue Ridge Mountains. They say you can see 7 states from there, however I think we could only see four. Alabama to the left, Tennessee in front, Georgia to the right and those blue ridge mountains of North Carolina way in the distance.

Friday: Sad goodbyes

Today we are moving on (how often have I started a blog page with this sentence). Unfortunately this mean's that having had a lovely week (tornado watch apart) we must say goodbye to our good friends. They are returning home to Florida, to continue with their life, while we will hitch up the trailer and move on to Chattanooga in Tennessee, just (read on). We have had an uneventful journey today. The Tennessee River is very impressive, so big, so far from the sea, bigger because of all the rain we have had this week, many fields and streams are flooded. Huntsville is on the edge of the Appalachian Mountains, which start at Birmingham, Alabama in the south. Our drive today takes us well into the mountains, though they aren't as tall as those further north they are quite impressive. Chattenooga is bigger than we had thought (expecting only a railway station), it has one major road passing through it, which takes local traffic, I75 North and South and I56 east to west all together. The entire length was almost at a standstill the whole time. We have parked in a small campground in the middle of Chattenooga, part of the Camping World store. The bad news is that it is close to I75. The good news is that we cannot hear the traffic. The bad news is that the noise of traffic has been drowned out by the local speedway track right next door. Oh well.
Camping World is right on the border between Georgia and Tennessee, the office is in Georgia and we camp in Tennessee, the good news here is that we only pay 7% sales tax, rather than the 9 1/4% sales tax for Tennessee.
We have come to Chattanooga to visit famous Civil War Battle sites: Lookout Mountain and Chiccamugua, as well as to find out about the train. More tomorrow.

Thursday: More Museums and some excitement

We had bought tickets to three museums, but only had time to visit two of them, so today we went to the third museum, the Old Railway Depot. Here we learned about how important the railways were to the war effort, for both sides in the Civil War. The Depot at Huntsville has remained virtually unchanged since 1850 when it was built. It shows the scars of when it was occupied by the Federal forces in 1862. It was never retaken, so meant that an important railway remained useless to the Confederate forces.
We returned to camp after lunch to do some laundry. The day had started out clear and blue, however the weather had deteriorated and it was now raining. We planned to move on the next day to Chattanooga, but had not booked a campsite, so when we had finished the laundry Sally had a rest and I took the computer and went a mile or two down the road to get a good signal (the mountain top is the first place where I could not get a signal from Verizon). Meanwhile the rain was getting heavier, so while I was stopped I thought it a good idea to check the local radio (I was actually was parked in the grounds of the radio station WAAS), only to find that they were in the middle of a special weather report. There was a weather front on the way, We were in a Tornado Watch Area! A tornado had touched down to the north (Meridianville) and another was touching down at a place called Big Cove and headed for Green Mountain (we were on Mont Sante), so I looked for these places on the GPS, only to find that they were actually about 2 miles to the south, uh oh! At that moment a siren went off, long and continuous, the sign for Tornado alert, the signal to find shelter. I scooted back up the hill to Sally, and sat in the car next to the trailer, checking exactly what was happening with the weather and waiting for the torrential rain to ease up. The ranger came round with his pick-up, blue and red lights blazing and using his loud speaker to warn us to go to the shower building as a tornado may be imminent. I then collected Sally, even in the rain, using poncho and umbrella we kept reasonably dry, though we both got wet feet as the truck was now standing in a three inch deep river of water carrying run off from the slope we were on.
We drove the truck to the shower building and took shelter there, with all the other campers, for about half an hour while the storm passed over us. The rain had been so loud drumming on the trailer roof that Sally had not been able to hear the Rangers warning. On our return to the trailer the water had been so fierce that it had shifted decorative logs that I could only just lift to move back into place. Interestingly, though the tornado had passed within a couple of miles, there was no appreciable wind where we were.
Our friends come to our trailer for the evening and we had a pot luck supper (mostly the Chile left from earlier in the week). An exciting afternoon. Now we know what to do when on a campsite when there is a Tornado warning!!!!

Wednesday: Museum Day

Today was a great day for weather; the weather seems to come in cycles as fronts pass over. There was not a cloud in the sky all day. We chose to go to with our friends to the family museum and then the Constitution Village. We had a great time as the kids dressed up as pioneers and we found out a lot about the past presidents and some more about Alabama’s history. In the evening it was warm enough to sit out and jam.

Tuesday: Space Camp

We had decided to go to the Space museum on Tuesday as the weather looked bad. We were right, it was cold damp and drizzly. We had a great time going round the museum . One section of the museum is set aside for the famous ‘Space Camp’, where they filmed the film ‘Space Camp’ (though they made it look like Cape Canaveral). There was lots of interesting space junk, including a complete Saturn V. There is now a lot more information about the new Ares rocket, the successor to the Shuttle. It looks like it will be big and the first part of the programme will be launched this summer. Why a space museum in Huntsville? Because Huntsville is the place where Werner Von Braun was located back in 1950 with the supply of V2 rockets he brought with him. They took over a disued chemical warfare facility. This grew into the Redstone Army Rocket Range, which then became home to NASA as the Marshall Space Center. It is really the centre for development of rocket engines, rockets, satellites and manned vehicles, including the lunar landers.

Monday: A Walk in the Woods

The weather today promised to be good. The forecast for tomorrow was wet, so we took the opportunity to explore the mountain top campground we were on. It had a number of trails along the top and sides, so we set out from a car park to find ‘The Three Caves’, only for Sally and I to have to turn back because the trails was not wheelchair friendly, even though it started that way. So we went to the caves by car, while they walked. The caves were actually an old limestone quarry but they had continued to mine the limestone right under the mountain. There were three huge entrances and you could see back for about 100 yards that they had used ‘room and pillar’ mining to extract the limestone. The quarry was overgrown and very pretty.

Sunday Moving on to Huntsville

Reasonable drive to Huntsville, met up with our friends Jay, Christie, Noah, Myah and Sarah, who were on a Spring Break Adventure from their home in Florida. It was nice to see a friendly face again. The weather was chilly, but we still managed to eat round their campfire, using their new campfire cooking equipment. It was quite satisfying to use the campfire to cook. We had chile.

Saturday: Recovery

Saturday we set aside for a bit of relaxation, Sally found a Salon in Wal-Mart and had her hair done, while I did a bit of shopping, tried to work out finances and where we were going next.