Atlanta is the USA's largest airport and it was my first time there. It wasn't a great experience. A very long taxi from the runway to the gate, a long walk from the gate and then a subway train to the exit. It's a long haul and it takes time - all a bit overwhelming.
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| Downtown Atlanta |
Our first stop in Atlanta was the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. Jimmy, of course, was from Plains, Georgia, and that was a place I had always wanted to visit. However, in our research I learned that Plains is quite a small place and there is not much there - there is not even a hotel there. So we skipped the delights of Plains and stayed in Atlanta.
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| Jimmy Carter getting his Nobel Prize |
I have always admired Jimmy Carter, he was a reasonable President and an excellent Ex-President, and I feel that he made a difference in this world and a difference for the good. It was most interesting to review Carter's life from his humble beginnings in rural Georgia, to a submariner officer in the Navy, back to Plains and then into politics as State Senator, Governor and then on to the White House. His post-presidential life has been even more impressive with his work supporting peace negotiations throughout the world, election monitoring, and, of course, Habitat for Humanity. What a stark comparison to the man we have in power today - what on earth would the current President's library look like.
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| The grounds of the Carter Presidential Library |
The grounds of the Carter Library and Carter Center were quite beautiful - a lovely park setting with lakes and trees and views of downtown Atlanta.
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| Coca Cola Advertising |
Atlanta doesn't have a lot to offer the tourist, at least not in my humble opinion. However, one of the places that looked like it would be worthwhile was the Coca Cola Museum, so we paid it a visit. Unfortunately it was not really very good. It was expensive for what it actually was ($25). Jusst a little history about the development of Coca Cola, the whole secrecy thing around the formula, the uniqueness of the bottle shape, the selling of the bottling rights for $1 but making money on the manufacturing of the flavoring syrup. One of the exhibits showed many of the world's soft drink brands and flavors. There was not a single mention of Pepsi Cola which, of course, is their main rival.
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| Olympic Centennial Park |
Moving on we walked through the Centennial Olympic Park, part of the development for the Summer Olympics in 1996. Atlanta has many tall impressive buildings and as we wandered around the downtown area we saw the impressively tall and round Westin Peachtree Hotel, some 73 stories tall. There is a restaurant on the top, the Sundial Restaurant and we paid it a visit. We had a nice meal overlooking the city - the huge Convention Center, the Mercedes Benz Stadium, the Olympic Park, the Aquarium and numerous tall office buildings each vying for position as the tallest or most impressive.
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| Olympic Park and the Westin Peachtree in the center |
We left the city before dark and drove part way to our next destination (Chattanooga), stopping in the small town of Cartersville for the night.
The next morning we took a brief drive around Cartersville. A nice little town but it appears nothing too interesting happened there. The nearby town of Rome, however, was surprisingly interesting. Rome was named after the Italian City as it was also located on 7 hills. The name of Rome was decided on by drawing names from a hat - each of the town's founders put a name in the hat and Rome was the one picked - it could just as easily have been named Warsaw.
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| Romulus and Remus in Rome, Georgia |
There is a bronze statue of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf in front of the City Hall. I later learned that the statue was donated to the city by Mussolini back in 1929. Rome's main street was lined with some very fine buildings that had mostly been kept in good condition. There was an old Kress Department Store, with their usual fine decorative exterior. Kress Department Stores had some wonderful buildings.
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| Coosa River, Rome |
We visited the Rome Historical Museum which turned out to be quite informative and interesting. Mr Pemberton, the creator of the Coca Cola flavor was born in Rome; as was the first wife of President Woodrow Wilson; the creator of the Popeye cartoon character worked on the riverboats on the Coosa River in Rome; a statue of the slave trader and Confederate General, Nathan Bedford Forrest once occupied a prominent position in the town until 2017 when it was removed to the History Museum.
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| Rome Clock Tower |
On the high ground overlooking the city is a clock tower. It was first built as a water tower and then later in its life converted to a clock tower. Quite an impressive structure which, at the time of our visit, was undergoing renovation.
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| Chattanooga Choo Choo |
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| Chattanooga Railway Station |
We dined on typical Southern food - fried green tomatoes, eggs and grits before visiting the railway station to see what all the fuss was about. Chattanooga was quite the railway hub in its day and the railway station has glimpses of its former grandeur but today it is not much to look at - a large but rather plain ticket hall/waiting room, an old steam engine, a carriage and that's it.
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| Chattanooga Railway Station |
It was a cloudy, windy and cold day with intermittent rain. It wasn't great weather for exploring any more of Chattanooga so we drove out of town, north towards our next destination, the Great Smoky Mountains. The road out of town to the west and north was much more attractive - it ran alongside the Tennessee River, and there were lots of new and presumably expensive homes and apartments.
The Tennessee River is a serious river and it was once a major transportation route back in the time of riverboats. It has subsequently been dammed many times and is now largely a recreational river. We took a little side step over one of these dams (the Chickamauga Dam) to view Chickamauga Lake - nothing too special about it though. We stayed that night in Alcoa. a small town outside Knoxville.
The next morning we drove over to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. By some counts this is the most visited National Park in the USA. We entered the Park near Townsend. There was a visitor center there staffed by concession staff not National Parks staff. They were remarkably ill informed about the park.
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| Great Smokey Mountain National Park |
It was cold and it had snowed the previous night so the mountains had a cap of snow on them. The road through the park to the North Carolina side was closed due to snow and to downed trees from a recent storm. We drove in the park on a loop road through Cade's Cove - very beautiful but not as dramatic as many other National Parks.
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| Chapel, Cade's Cove, SmokeyMountains |
There was an old cabin and a farmhouse preserved and as well as a couple of chapels. From the size of the cemetery behind one chapel there must at one time have been quite a settlement in the park but little remains today. The park boasts that it is the most bio-diverse park in the National Park system. That was surprising as it isn't a huge park. Nonetheless there were beautiful wild narcissi and rhododendrons everywhere - it would certainly be wonderful when the rhododendrons are blooming. The road ran alongside some beautiful mountain rivers with some nice exposures of rock (metamorphosed sedimentary rocks).
The south-west side of the park near Townsend identifies itself as "the peaceful side of the Smokies - an area for uninterrupted relaxation". I didn't fully appreciate that until we came out of the park to Gatlinburg, the more northerly park entrance. Gatlinburg was a shock to the system - after a lovely drive through some of the most beautiful country, Gatlinburg is an assault on the senses - hotels, restaurants, every imaginable fast food place, cable cars, amusement arcades - what a horror.
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| Dollywood, Pigeon Forge |
To add to the horror, just outside Gatlinburg is the equally cheesy town of Pigeon Forge where Dollywood, Dolly Parton's amusement park, resides. On the day we passed by it looked closed but the size of their vast, but empty, parking lot suggests that it is likely quite a popular destination.
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| Trump Store near Pigeon Forge |
One thing we had noticed in the area was a number of Trump stores. Presumably where you could buy all manner of Trump memorabilia. We didn't dare go inside one, in case our political leaning was discovered, but we did snap a photo. In the area of nearby Knoxville, Google Maps identified four separate Trump stores. It is a different part of the country there.
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| The Smokey Mountains from the Foothills Parkway |
There was one more piece of the Great Smokeys that was accessible to us and that was the Foothills Parkway. The entry to this road was near the town of Walland which we had passed on our way into the park in the morning. The Parkway was a very scenic road on a ridge of the foothills that provided wonderful views to the east into the higher Smokeys.
We then drove back to Chattanooga. Since it was a clear sunny day we thought we would revisit some of the sites we missed the previous day when the weather was bad.
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| The Tennessee River and Mocassin Bend, Chattanooga |
The main location we wanted to see was Lookout Mountain. This turned out to be very impressive. A modest sized mountain overlooking Chattanooga and a horseshoe bend in the Tennessee River below. The horseshoe bend is called Mocassin Bend.
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| Civil War Memorial, Lookout Mountain, Chattanooga |
There was a significant battle in the US Civil War to capture the top of Lookout Mountain. The Confederates were in control of the mountain, but the Union soldiers had captured the city of Chattanooga below. The Union Army eventually forced the Confederates out of their perch above the city and then began their push onwards to Atlanta. The area is now a part of the National Parks Service and there is a small museum there. It was a beautiful area with great views of the city below. One could only imagine how difficult it must have been to dislodge the Confederates from the top of the mountain.
The other remarkable thing about Lookout Mountain was that it was also a neighborhood. The road winds up tree lined slopes to get to the top where you find an entire community of homes. Very fine homes too.
There is a sink hole with a waterfall called Ruby Falls on the way up the hill which we didn't get time to see and a children's amusement park called Rock City which we also, thankfully, didn't get to see.
As darkness fell we drove back down the hill into Chattanooga where we stumbled across an excellent Italian restaurant, Alleia. The food was terrific and we highly recommended it.
After dinner, we drove further north-west towards Nashville stopping in Kimball for the night.
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| University of the South, Sewanee |
The next morning we drove on towards Lynchburg where we were going to visit the Jack Daniel's Distillery. On the way we got side-tracked to Sewanee which boasts the University of the South. The University of the South is an Episcopalian School. The buildings were most impressive. It dates back to 1857 and was built with the blessing of the English Episcopal Church with funds secured from all sorts of slave traders, slave owners and assorted Confederates. It has a dark past.
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| Chapel, University of the South, Sewanee |
The campus is quite beautiful with many Gothic buildings clad in the local stone. While the buildings are built to look old, they are actually quite new with many only finished in the late 20th, early 21st centuries. We went inside the main chapel. A magnificent building with a beautiful rose window at one end.
The school may have been out as there were only a few people around. It did look a bit of a sterile environment - very clean, very tidy, everything in order. It is of course primarily a religious studies college. Not a place for your wild student years, but then who knows what really goes on there.
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| The Jack Daniel's Distillery, Lynchburg |
From Sewanee we drove into Lynchburg and signed up for a tour of the Jack Daniel's Distillery. It was a most educational tour. To start the tour they bused us up to the top of the hill where there are several barrel houses. These barrel houses are dotted around the area and there are some 1.9 million barrels of aging whiskey. Each barrel of whiskey is aged at least 5 years.
We then moved downhill to the various other parts of the operation - the charcoal production area (Jack Daniel's is filtered in sugar maple charcoal - that is what makes it special), the grinding area (where the material of corn, rye and barley are fine ground), the spring where the iron-free water issues from the bottom of a cliff, the mash houses where the grounds and water are heated and the fermentation process started, the stills themselves, the filtration tanks, and finally the bottling area.
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| A flight of Whiskey |
At the end of the tour we were given a sampling of whiskey. There was a flight of 6 glasses in total, 4 conventional whiskeys, and two flavored ones. I can't remember now the different types but I do remember my favorite was the Gentleman Jack variety. This whiskey goes through a second filtration phase and it is much smoother. I could become accustomed to that. The cinnamon and apple flavored ones were simply awful.
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| The Black Fungus of Lynchburg |
One interesting feature of the area around the distillery was the black fungus that coats most trees and buildings. First I thought a forest fire had passed through the area but no, it is a fungus (baudoinia compniacensis) that thrives on ethanol vapors and forms the black sooty deposit that clings to everything. It is apparently not a health risk but it is a nuisance for residents in Lynchburg. In the prohibition era, it was helpful in finding illegal stills. You just had to wait until wintertime when the trees were bare and then look for patches of black in the forest. That would then lead you to an illegal still.
The irony of the whole Jack Daniel's operation, which is without a doubt a big operation, is that Lynchburg is in a dry county of Tennessee, so you are not able to buy the whiskey in any bar, restaurant, or store. As a paid guest on the tour you can however purchase a bottle, or two, or three....
A quick lunch in Lynchburg then we continued our way to Nashville.
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| Broadway, Nashville |
Nashville's main street, Broadway, was a real surprise. It was just bustling with people, mainly young people, and there was bar after bar along the street. Each bar had live music. Each bar was pretty much full of party goers. It was a raucous, cacophony of dueling bands and well-lubricated customers. That was very interesting to observe for us old folks but not quite our cup of tea these days.
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| Tennessee Capitol, Nashville |
After wandering around for a while and getting a bite to eat we headed out of the entertainment area to the State Capitol building. An impressive structure sitting on the high ground above the river below (the Cumberland River). There were memorials to Andrew Jackson and James Polk the two presidents from Tennessee as well as a statue of Sergeant York, the infamous WWI soldier that was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for his exploits in capturing a machine gun post and some 132 prisoners. It was made into a film - Sergeant York with Gary Cooper playing York.
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| The Ryman Auditorium, Nashville |
The next morning we again went into the center of Nashville. It was quieter in the early morning, but still relatively lively - bars were open, bands were playing, people were drinking. We walked past the Ryman Auditorium, the so-called birthplace of Country Music. I remember visiting there back in the mid 1980's. It was quite different then - much quieter.
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| Lester Flatt and his guitar |
We then visited the Country Music Hall of Fame - a large modern building housing memorabilia from all manner of country musicians. It was somewhat interesting but country music is not my favorite and how many guitars and mandolins and over the top stage costumes can you take in at one time. It is a situation of been there, done that and no need to revisit.
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| Andrew Jackson's Memorial, Nashville Capitol Building |
We again visited the Tennessee State Capitol just to see it in the daylight. It was a Saturday and International Women's Day. There was a small protest going on against abortion limitations and other women's issues. Not a very significant demonstration, at least not at the time we were there - possibly 30 people all together.
We walked through town and took a seat in a small park where a young women was playing guitar and singing - she was actually quite good. I imagine you have a lot of competition as a musician in Nashville. Perhaps it would be easy to get work, but it would be difficult to stand out. Diana was given a yellow rose for International Women's Day. I got nothing!
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| The Parthenon, Nashbille |
On our way out to the airport we deviated to look at the full scale replica of the Parthenon in Centennial Park. Apparently, back in the late 1800's Nashville was known as the Athens of the South so for the Tennessee Centennial Exposition someone decided it would be a good idea to have a replica of the Parthenon in the city. It is a beautiful structure and is in way better condition than the original Greek version.
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| Vanderbilt University, Nashville |
Nearby is Vanderbilt University. We only drove by on our way to the airport but the campus looked very impressive. It apparently is quite a good school.
We dropped off our rental car and somehow avoided any additional penalty for the small damage we created on the front bumper or for the extra couple of hours over our intended rental period. That made me feel good at least.
Another nice trip, but not an epic trip.
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