July 17, 2015–Day 12 Chattanooga, TN

  • Jul 26, 2015
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A rooster crowed at 3:33, 4:44, and just kept on going hourly.  I was thankful there was no crow this morning, like yesterday, answering back. Somewhere in the five o’clock hour I had nudged Scott and told him it was raining, so that he could help me put the fly on the tent.  He responded, “I know about it. Don’t worry about it.” I was rather tired, and so I rolled over even with the slight water torture on my head every now and then.  It turns out Scott did not remember the conversation at all.  The conversation only came up because he was wondering why everything was slightly damp. We laughed about it later as it seems to be his default statement to cover all of my concerns. “I know about it. Don’t worry about it.”

Cody was up and chatting with Scott in his usual just woke up super animated way. We finally left the campground at 11.  We headed to Lookout Mountain. On the way the kids added a new state, Georgia!  We were really only in Georgia five minutes so I didn’t think it should count, but Scott says it does. Then we were back in TN.  We stopped at Wal-Mart for a quick shopping trip.

At 1 we attended a  thirty minute ranger talk on the history of the Lookout Mountain Battlefield and the Battle of Chickamauga. It was about a mile walk.  It was hot, hilly, and we had missed lunch between driving and shopping.  So Cody melted a bit. We learned some great facts despite Cody’s meltdown.  The ranger was very understanding.  She knows kids have short attention spans and also helped by slipping in some additional Junior Ranger facts we needed in her speech.  She also had some great stories that caught the kids’ interest.  Lookout Mountain overlooks Chattanooga with a population of 170,000. It was much smaller during the Civil War, but it was important because of its railroad connection from the north to the south.

I am not a war historian, but these are the facts as I wrote them mid-melting down child:

In September of 1863 the Confederate Army wins Chicamauga and then comes back to Chatanooga and surrounds the Union Army who had taken over Chatanooga.  The Confederate Army refuses to let Union supplies or troops in or out. The siege leaves the Union soldiers eating only nine crackers a day.  The leader of the Confederate Army at Chattanooga was not well respected.  He would give orders and his subordinates may or may not listen.  To add to this confusion only 1 in 9 cannonballs were exploding properly.  The fog that frequently settles on the mountain did not help either. Eventually the Union was able to sneak a supply line in and before long the Union took over again. A Union soldier was so excited about winning he jumped up on a cannon without checking if it was hot or not. The story goes that he was out of commission for two weeks.

There was a museum with fun facts about sign language and signaling during the Civil War, but I was only able to take pictures and run as Brooke claimed she needed the washroom or she was going to explode. We finished the Junior Ranger badges in the comfort of the air conditioned living portrait room after a narrow save from a child explosion.

The cannons at the visitors center seemed to recharge Cody.  He was determined to get a cannon.

After our tour and finishing the Junior Ranger badges we ate a hodge-podge lunch.  Scott has been determined to eat a PB & J for the entire two weeks of our trip. He indignantly announced to me, “I am going to eat a PB & J!” When he finally bit into it, “Finally! Two weeks in and I FINALLY get a peanut butter and jelly!”

It’s a good thing I am the only one who is over dramatic about things we miss when we are out and about camping. Cody was showing his excitement at having found the Cheetos from home leftover from his birthday party. He wanted Meme to know the Cheetos food group was covered.  Thankfully he had some yogurt and cherries after he finished the Cheetos.

A gentleman approached us while we were eating and said, “I can’t find it!”

To which Scott replied, “What’s that?”

“The kitchen sink!”  He was referring to our van. We had to tell him that we did in fact have a sink. Two to be exact.

We headed to the Laundromat in Chattanooga. Scott doesn’t do the sitting still thing well so he walked to a farmer’s market for some sweet corn and Georgia peaches. He came back and headed out to the grocery store to find the few items we forgot earlier.  The kids played with an adorable family with four kids while I tried to work on the blog.  While I was slowly pulling out items that had dried out of the dryers and feeding the dryers quarters, I played with the most adorable fourteen month old.  She was just so excited to be talking, walking, and exploring.

Speaking of curiosity Brooke was hooked on watching Family Feud while we were at the Laundromat. She kept asking why people were answering questions for money, and such silly questions at that. Since we don’t have television she has never seen game shows. She also wanted to know what the tiny sheets were that the other family was putting into their dryers.  She has no idea what dryer sheets are as we can’t use them with her sensitive skin. Who knew the Laundromat was going to be an educational experience?!?

The Laundromat was not the way we wanted to spend our Friday afternoon, but we had two weeks of dirty laundry to take care of.  Out west we would have washed and line dried the laundry by hand, but the sticky southeastern air doesn’t allow for much drying.

While I was putting the laundry and the new farmer’s market food in the bins in the van I witnessed a very odd exchange in the parking lot. I was struck by the desperate hollow eyes of the people in the car that was waiting for its exchange at the back of the parking lot where only we were parked to keep the cooler shaded.

At 5:30 we were finally finished with the laundry and we headed to Mojo Burrito for dinner.  It had great reviews on Yelp.  The food was delicious, but it was very expensive and extremely loud.  Maybe it was because we have been camping and we weren’t used to so much noise, but regardless it would not be a repeat location for us.

We arrived at Cherokee National Forest at 8:20pm.  This is our first time dispersed (a.k.a. find a nice spot tucked off the gravel road with no water) camping on this trip.  When we disperse or primitive camp finding a site is almost always an adventure.  Phrases that come to mind from past dispersed camping ventures are, “Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads!” and “Cow Poop?  I was sure there was going to be more at the top of this hill than cow poop!

It turned out that there weren’t too many opportunities to find a nice piece of land off the gravel road.  The sides along the road were steeply inclined.  The few spots that looked like they might make a good site were already taken by 8pm on a Friday night.  So we wound up at a defunct campground that had its well condemned years ago.  No water, but we had camp neighbors and a place to put our heads for the night.  One of our camp neighbors sent soothing acoustic guitar music out into the beautiful summer night.  Scott and I read some My Side of the Mountain until Cody drifted off.

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