Lookout Mountain and Other Things

We just finished up a lovely stay near Chattanooga.  We camped at Marion County Park, a nice little place on a peninsula in Nickajack Lake.  Being on a peninsula, at least half of the campsites (including ours) were on the lake.  Aaron was a bit sad that we didn't get a site further down the peninsula where we could see the lake from all angles inside the RV, but I thought our site was lovely.

Our campsite at Marion County Park

The park was located in a pretty rural area and we had about a 20 minute drive into Chattanooga.  The drive dipped into Georgia and crossed the time zone boundary - this last part took me a bit by surprise and I ended up rescheduling our Chattanooga activities near the last minute to be comfortably reachable for being based in the central time zone (Chattanooga itself is in the eastern time zone).

We only had one really nice day here and we spent the whole day doing various things on Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga.  We started the day at Ruby Falls, in a cavern underneath the mountain.  At the falls themselves you're 1000ft below the mountain peak!  Based on the 1930s-style advertising I was thinking Ruby Falls would be kind of cheesy...I couldn't be more wrong.  This cave had the most money poured into its improvements of any we've ever seen, with actual signs labeling formations, sound systems throughout, and even wifi hot spots!  Of course, the most incredible part was the underground waterfall itself.  Words (and pictures) cannot describe how awe-inspiring it was to stand at the base of the underground waterfall.  It didn't hurt of course that they had a sound and light show hooked up in the room to trigger your emotions.  But still...145 feet of underground waterfall (the tallest underground waterfall open to the public in the US) is beautiful, and the massively huge underground room the waterfall carved is awe-inspiring.  One of the most amazing things about this place is that it was discovered completely by accident.  They haven't found a natural entrance to the cave - it was only discovered because they were trying to build a new entrance to the already-known Lookout Mountain Caverns, and in drilling an elevator shaft to those caverns they accidentally drilled into the Ruby Falls caverns.  A few feet difference in drilling and this amazing site never would have been discovered!!

Outside the entrance to the caverns

Looking out at the Tennessee River and Chattanooga from the 
Ruby Falls tower.  The tower was constructed from the rock
blasted out to create the elevator shaft to the caverns 

The underground waterfall!  The photo does not
do it justice, this room is massively huge

After the falls, we took the Incline Railway to the top of Lookout Mountain.  The views from the mountaintop were amazing, and we walked the short distance to Point Park, part of the Chickamauga & Chattanooga National Military Park.  The appearance of Point Park reflects its earlier management by the Corps of Engineers, who constructed the entrance to look like their logo.

Looking out the bottom of the rail car

Crazy steep incline railway!  Note the cables visible in the right
track that haul the cars up and down

View from Lookout Mountain

Point Park - the structure is not historic at all, but was built
by the Corps of Engineers after it became a memorial park

Obligatory Aaron + cannon picture at a military park :-)

Risking his life on rocks at an overlook
in Point Park

We spent the rest of our trip in the central time zone, which was much easier to keep track of!  We explored all sorts of places near-ish to our campground.   First up: the corner where Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia meet.  Unsurprisingly, this was kind of a random point in the woods.  We parked at a cemetery (the nearest road) and followed a trail back to the point.  Unfortunately some very determined vandal had removed the marker from its concrete home, but fortunately a nearby resort had erected an arch so we knew we were in the right place.

Tri-State Corner - I'm standing where
the marker should have been

Next we stopped by the Nickajack Cave Wildlife Refuge, which had a well-maintained path out to an overlook of the cave on Nickajack Lake.  We finished up our tour of random small things near our campground with a trip to the Nickajack Dam.  This last stop was particularly fascinating because of the massive number of birds hanging out near the dam outfall, where the water was very turbulent.  I wouldn't have thought many fish would be in the area - what with the turbulent water - but the birds proved me very wrong, as we saw them catch several fish in the short time we were there.  We saw large numbers of black vultures, great blue herons, cormorants, and some kind of small songbird-looking bird.  We've never seen so many herons and cormorants in one place.

The overlook of Nickajack Cave

This black vulture posed very nicely for me.
The black vultures had basically no fear of us

This is kind of hard to see, but all the little black heads are cormorants 
in kind of a little whirlpool, in which they seemed to enjoy hanging out
perhaps because it didn't push them downstream so fast?  On the rocks
you can see a couple of the about 10 herons that were present before
we walked up close - it seems that herons are quite timid!

All the herons fled up to the railing on the dam when we came 
close.  Less obvious are the line of black vultures on the roof 
of the dam

After all of our fun little side trips, we headed farther out to the Russell Cave National Monument.  This cave was quite an archaeological find, with artifacts dating back over 10,000 years showing fairly continuous use of the cave.  They no longer let you walk through the cave, but it was neat to see all the same, and we got to get another stamp for our National Park Passport!

Close up of the upper cave, with a view of the archaeological
dig site.  This cave seems to have been more used, probably 
because it was less prone to flooding

Russell Cave, upper and lower sections

Our final day we went hiking at Foster Falls, a beautiful waterfall only a short (but steep!) hike from the parking lot in the South Cumberland State Park.  The picture doesn't do it justice, but the falls had carved out a massive basin in this tall and wide cliff.

The falls from the top - visible before you hike at all

A rather swingy bridge near the bottom

Foster Falls!

Aaron thought I looked funny climbing up 
the slick rocks on the steep path...

We had a lot of kind of unexpected fun in the Chattanooga area - I hadn't expected to find quite so many neat things to do!