Vacation - Second Day

I'm kinda jumping around on these posts and need to cover a couple earlier things now. The first day was just driving and we spent the night in Decatur, Alabama. When we started off the next morning I saw a bunch of the color blue showing up on the Garmin and suddenly we were making a left turn and crossing the Tennessee River. It's very wide here. (In reading about BC Goodner in the Civil War, he mentions the efforts in crossing the river and here, you can see why!). (BTW - this was our first trip with the Garmin and I'm addicted to it now. It saved us a number of times, particularly in getting us back on track after a wrong turn. I'll never leave home without it now!) Our first stop that day was at Lookout Mountain - Chattanooga is across the river at the base of the mountain. We drove to the top and were really surprised at the number of homes all along the road and what a large area it is at the summit.

We ran into a guy at Point Park that was a real Civil War buff! (Are there any other kinds of "buffs" other than "Civil War buffs"??). He took the pictures of us that has the marker in it. He asked if I was familiar with a picture of U. S. Grant leaning against the side of a mountain. I said I was and he pointed to a grown-up area just below us and said "That's where the picture was taken!". He was upset that the area was neglected and said he was going to complain about it. He lives in Chattanooga and pointed out the place where he works to us. (For Thermalloy friends - he was a Tony Shotwell!!) This isn't the picture but that is Grant on the left and it is the place where the referenced picture was taken.


In this picture there are mountains on the left, river on the right, and a 25 MPH sign. We drove for hours like that. The speed limit was sometimes as high as 45 MPH but usually 25-35. It was a beautiful drive - until it got dark and started raining - one of the two rains on the whole trip - weather wasn't really a factor! The next morning we were in Asheville and had to put on our jackets to go to breakfast.


You've probably tried to take pictures like this before. The vast beautiful vistas just never seem to photograph well - but you have to try just the same. We took lots of these. (Yep - we drove on that road down there.)