Day 6: Chattanooga & Great Smoky Mountainsomorr

It was an absolutely gorgeous morning in Chattanooga. On our way out of town we stopped off to see the famous Chattanooga choo choo. The train ran from Cincinnati to Chattanooga, a vital supply line for the town. The old train depot is now a hotel and center for a few other businesses. Some of the old train cars serve as hotel rooms. The grounds are quite pretty, the train fun to look at.

On our way out of town we stopped at the Chickamauga & Chattanooga National Military Park. This park relives the history of the civil war battle that took place there. Interestingly enough, this park was created before the national park service. About 30 years after the civil war those that fought there gathered together. They erected thousands of monuments that remembered the ones who fought in the battle, battle strategies, those that died, pretty much everything about the battle. It's an interesting park to drive/walk through. Once the park service was founded this became a National Military Park.

Then it was on to Gatlinburg, and here is where we are now. Not a bad drive, though traffic got bad once we got to Gatlinburg. I did not realize that this park is the most visited of all the national parks. Gatlinburg is full of all the usual tourist trap stuff, and crazy amounts of people, like beach boardwalk in the summer crazy. But the park is big and the weather forecast isn't as bad tomorrow as we originally thought it might be. Not camping again tonight was probably the right call. Got some pretty good rain showers from about 5:30-8, might be a few more overnight. Would have been another damp night.

We did get one hike in to Laurel Falls today. It was a very pretty waterfall. We saw our first bear on the way down from the falls. A little cub was climbing around a tree. I'm guessing mama bear wasn't far off.

And that brings us to now. We'll see what the weather does tomorrow, but i think everyone is looking forward to some hiking and mountain time.

If you read this, and Mike's blog, I'm sure you've noticed some discrepancies. Go with whatever Mike says, it's a sure bet he's right and I'm not.