Chattanooga National Military Park, and weather watch

The drive from Manchester to Chattanooga has a long hill to climb, it’s slow, and the descent is a 6% grade for 4 miles.                       We filled fuel at Loves near Chattanooga, TN. It’s nice to pay less than $3.00/gallon!
The highway dips down in Georgia for just a few miles.

I wanted to go to the Chattanooga National Military Park in Chattanooga, TN. We didn’t want to take our RV, so we unhooked at Walmart and took the Jeep up. The roads are twisty and steep.  All the parking spots had meters that we saw. The first empty one we stopped at didn’t work, there was a quarter stuck in it. The next empty one didn't work and we lost a quarter. Moved on to another spot and put in 3 quarters for 45 minutes. The Battles for Chattanooga building is right by the National Park Office so we stopped in there first. It costs $8/adult to see their presentation. We decided to see what the National Park Service office had (as they’re usually free movies, exhibits, etc.). It costs $3/person to enter the park. Our America the Beautiful national pass has expired, so we got one today at $80.  We got a park brochure and also a trail sheet. The volunteer told us we’d be able to walk to Craven House and then back up a different trail, about 2 miles. It’s not a hard trail, pretty level. Also, that we could park behind their building free if there’s room. (Nice to know.) We took pictures of the park and then Curt moved the Jeep to their parking lot (lots of room).  We started down the trail to a museum, had a few exhibits and pictures, and then continued our way downhill, and lots of steps. As we went, it kept going down further. We’re thinking, okay, we do have to come back up again. I guess our idea of “level” isn’t the same as hers. We finally got to Craven House (1-1/2 miles), all downhill. The house is closed, and there’s a lot of monuments and signs in the area. We tried to figure out the trail we were suppose to take back up. The map she gave us is not the same as the ones we saw on their signs posted. We didn’t want to pick the wrong one, and end up coming back down, so we went back up the same way we came down. So, our 2-mile hike turned to 3, not level, lots of steps. Definitely not used to this. Needless to say, my legs are tired tonight!



Severe storm warnings out again for tonight, looks like a long storm cell to our west. Louisville, KY and Nashville, TN are in a real bad area. While we were watching the Weather channel and our computer, there was a tornado watch out for Huntsville, AL which is 100 miles SW of Chattanooga, and a bunch of watches out in Kentucky. We did luck out again, with only rain and wind. No hail or tornadoes.