Pardon Me Boys, Is That The Chattanooga Choo Choo?

Can anybody think of Chattanooga without thinking of the song Chattanooga Choo Choo? Note: It was the first ever song to receive a gold record, presented by RCA Victor in 1942 for sales of 1.2 million.

I've found a really nice little county park right outside of Chattanooga. It is on a peninsula that juts out into Chickamauga Lake which is just really a wide spot in the Tennessee River. A lot of the campsites are right on the water – or they would be if the water wasn't so low. Every winter, they let the water recede and then when spring comes, they open the dam and let the water from all the snow and rain up north come flooding down, which brings the water level back up.

My view out my door

Did I mention the nuclear power plant across the lake?

There are a lot of touristy things to do in Chattanooga (Lookout Mountain, Ruby Falls) but I am here to go to the Chattanooga Aquarium. It is supposed to be one of the nation's top aquariums and it is located right on the shores of the Tennessee River. There are two buildings in the aquarium, one is titled River Journey while the other is Ocean Journey. When I bought my ticket ($29.95 per person – whoa, that is a pricey ticket), the ticket seller told me that I should start in the River Journey building. I was a little disappointed – I mean – oceans just seem so much more exciting than rivers. Oceans are dynamic, oceans thunder and roar. Rivers, on the other hand, just quietly go about their business, bringing their water down to feed the mighty ocean. Actually, if I had to pick, I probably favor rivers more than oceans – they are more peaceful, going places in an orderly manner.

Now that I've visited the Aquarium, I am glad I started with the River Journey. The River Journey building is as tall as a twelve story building. You take an escalator to the fourth floor and then follow a series of ramps down to the ground level. They have huge aquariums that are actually four stories tall. On each level, there are side rooms where you can veer off and explore different types of river life.

The escalator - almost like Disneyland with little TV screens to watch as you ascended

Part of one of the really tall tanks

Look!!!  A Waterfall !!!!  They had an aviary up on the top floor with lots of free flying birds

I guess baby gators can be cute

Several of the bigger alligators had their toenails colored.  Here you can see the Pink Gator

Found a fish I thought was pretty - it was all silvery and very elegant

And then it smiled at me

Perhaps this is a better candidate for Mr. Handsome Fish

I was impressed with the turtles and tortoises that were on display. All types, all sizes. I watched several boy turtles trying to impress their lady friends. They swim up to the girls and get nose to nose with them. They then put their front claws up on each side of her head and start fluttering them. It was rather romantic.

Check out the neck on this one

The Ocean Journey is only ten stories tall, but has the largest tank in the aquarium. It can be viewed from three levels plus you can walk underneath the tank itself and watch the fish swimming above you. On the top floor, they have a lemur exhibit, a tank where you can touch sharks and sting rays and a butterfly garden. When I visited the butterfly garden, they were just releasing a bunch of newly emerged butterflies. I was disappointed that the penguin display was closed for it's weekly cleaning. No penguins were to be found, but you could watch the guy hosing down their quarters. How exciting was that? The coolest thing in the Ocean Journeys building though was the Jellyfish exhibits. They were so ethereal. The aquarium has collaborated with the Hunter Museum of American Art and includes rotating exhibits of art glass alongside the jellyfish.

If you get the blog in an email and are having problems seeing the video, click on the title of the blog in the email and it will take you to the website where you can watch the video. It's pretty cool.

The Aquarium was well worth the admission price. I probably spent about four hours there looking at all the fish. The finale was walking outside to the plaza and seeing a pair of tracks going off into the distance with the lyrics for Chattanooga Choo Choo running in between the tracks. Well done, Chattanooga.

To The Stars and Beyond

Enough of Mississippi – time to leave the lovely Tishomingo Park and go to the big city – Huntsville, Alabama. I was married at one time to a Marine and we were stationed in Huntsville for almost a year, way back when. It has certainly changed since then. I heard someplace that it is the city with the largest growth of technology jobs in the United States. The place is huge. It is located in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains. If you look west, it is totally flat – if you look east, you see big, big hills.

I ended up staying for four nights at Monte Sano State Park which was located ….on the top of Monte Sano mountain. You could look down from your campsite on the top of the mountain, nestled in the woods and see the Huntsville lights spread out all the way to the horizon. There were lots of trails and they even had an observatory there that never seemed to be open. I wonder what you could actually see in the observatory with all those lights down below. Huntsville is definitely Not on the Dark Sky list. 

Miko has a boyfriend (he's the one on the left, in case you don't recognize Miko)

The weather has not been all that conducive to flip flops and Pina Coladas.  

The clouds are low on the mountain today

What is that white stuff?  Alabama, you disappoint me so.

My first stop in Huntsville was to the visitor center where I spent maybe a half hour with a very personable Visitor Center lady named Mildred. She told me about an artist's enclave where there were over 200 artist studios that you could visit all based in one old warehouse.

Instruments made out of cigar boxes

There were three large walls of pencil drawings of perhaps album covers?  The artist was really into Tom Waits - tons of Tom Waits pictures

One of the reasons I came to Huntsville was to drive about an hour out of the way to a place called Russell Cave. It is a National Monument. People had been living there off and on since 10,000 BC. I seem to be running into these ancient sites a lot this trip. I now know what they call all the ages that these people lived in – I have it memorized and I shall bore you with the list. Ice Age, Archaic or Paleo, Woodland and finally Mississippian.

The cave

The main reason though that I thought I would stop in Huntsville was to go to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center. Huntsville was where so much history happened starting with bringing over German scientists right after World War II to build the space program. So...the day comes and I thought to myself – Do I really want to do this? It is either go to the Space Center or stay home and do laundry, read books and nap. I'm afraid to say that napping won out – no Space Center for me. Oh well.

I moved on to Austell Georgia which is just west of Atlanta. I've been watching a lot of YouTube videos about Rvs where one of the front tires blows and there is a total loss of control, sending the driver into the ditch and even sometimes rolling the rigs right over on their sides. I know, I know – I should not watch things like this but it is too late. So because of my terror at this happening, I have come to a place that makes and installs something called Safe-T-Plus. If you have a tire blowout, it is supposed to help make sure that you don't go veering off the road. By going to the factory to get it installed, I saved about $500. Of course some of that is offset by the amount of gas I used to get to the Atlanta area.

Where I spent the night, behind the factory

It's that white tube there - going to protect me from being a YouTube star. 

And yes, I did drive up on those ramps all by myself.

It's Alright Mama

One of the great old roads that crisscross America is Natchez Trace. It goes from Natchez, Mississippi 440 miles up to Nashville Tennessee. It was used by the Chickasaw Indians, the Kaintucks (boatmen from Kentucky) and Union forces during the Civil War. I've been wanting to drive it and I finally got the chance to motor down about 150 miles of it. The speed limit is 50 mph and the road is nice and smooth which made it a pleasure to drive  (unlike Louisiana which vies with Oklahoma for the worst roads in the nation – personal opinion only) . It was nicely wooded, very serene with many historical and scenic places you could pull off and contemplate but after about 50 miles of it, I must admit – ho hum. Ok, been there, done that. I only drove it in Mississippi and Alabama, maybe it is different in Tennessee.

Along the way, I stopped in Tupelo, Mississippi – birthplace of Mr. Elvis Presley. Several years earlier, I had stopped at Graceland, where Elvis died. I thought it would be nice to see where it all began. In 1971, the East Heights Garden Club started a project to improve and renovate the shotgun house. You start doing the Elvis experience in the gift shop where you can buy tickets to tour the inside of the house. The ladies selling the tickets were women of a certain age with their 1950's southern lady beehive hairstyles. I almost succumbed to buying an Elvis wall clock – they were cutouts of Elvis singing. The clock part was stationary, but the pendulum part were his legs which rocked back and forth. Way cool. The movie about his time in Tupelo was out of order so I didn't get to see it.

Outside, on a circular walkway around the house were plaques commemorating each year of Elvis' life from his birth until his death. Only the first thirteen plaques for his first thirteen years had anything written on them. Elvis moved to Memphis when he was thirteen, so I guess after he left Tupelo, nothing much happened.

Vernon Presley built this house for $180.  It was eventually repossessed because he could not pay back the loan.

Elvis at 13

There was also a chapel where you could go in and listen to recordings of  Elvis singing gospel music.  I listened for a bit from outside, but decided I did not need to go in.

I wonder if attendance at places like this drop off as the people who grew up with Elvis no longer can make the pilgrimage or if Elvis will live forever for generations to come. 

I camped at Tombigbee State Park which had a lovely lake

Walkway to Infinity?

I moved up to Tishomingo State Park in Mississippi. I think if I could spit, I would be able to hit Alabama - it was that close to the border. It is up in the northeastern part of Mississippi. I have a list that somebody put together of the best state parks in each state and Tishomingo is supposed to be the best state park in Mississippi. I don't know what criteria “they” are using to pick the best state park, but Tishomingo was a pretty good state park. The campsites surround a lake, there were only a couple of other campers and there are a lot of hiking trails. I spent a few days in the park, just hanging out, doing nothing but hiking and decompressing.

View out my side door of my campsite - see my picnic table way down by the lake?

Haven't had any pictures of rocks lately

There was a swinging bridge across a river built by the CCC

Miko does not like swinging bridges that move when you step on them - she slunk across 

The Friends of Tishomingo Park have an Easter Egg hunt every year.  They have already started decorating the park.  There were Easter bunny cutouts all over the park.   These people are going all out here.

Entrance to the park - Miko is saying WTH?

The park mailbox

Angry Birds

I have now left Louisiana for good. Or at least for good as far as this particular trip is concerned. It was not my most favorite state, but a lot of that may have had to do with the weather. Seemed like it sure does rain a lot there and everything just seems damp, damp, damp.

Vicksburg, Mississippi – the home of Riverfront Murals and also one of the most decisive battles of the Civil War. I'm not real keen on battlefields, I find them sad. The Vicksburg National Battlefield, besides it's place in our history, is also considered an 'Art Park' – art as in every time you turn around, there is another monument – and a very fancy monument at that.

Now for a quick history lesson: Vicksburg sits on some very high bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River. The Union wanted to capture Vicksburg because it would split the Confederacy in half and disrupt a major supply chain. General U.S. Grant tried attacking several times and was foiled at each attempt because of those high bluffs. Finally, it became a siege situation and it took 47 days before the Confederacy surrendered to the Union. While the siege was going on, the town was bombarded day and night by cannon fire. The citizens resorted to digging caves and living in them while the siege went on.

After watching the movie at the park headquarters, I took the self-guided driving tour through the battlefield. It was really a lovely day for a drive but after a couple of hours, I have to admit that I began to get bored. There is only so much white marble(granite?  alabaster?) that a person can see in a day.

Minnesota's monument is one of the first grand ones you come across

The Illinois monument ain't too shabby either - there are 47 steps to commemorate the siege

At one point though, on the drive is the USS Cairo museum. The USS Cairo was one of the first American ironclad warships built at the beginning of the Civil War. She was built in 1861 and sank in 1862. She has the distinction of being the first ever ship to be sunk by a mine that was remotely detonated by hand. In the 1960's, she was raised from the mud and has been on exhibit in Vicksburg.

Is it just me or is the USS Cairo actually an Angry Bird?

The Riverfront Murals are a set of 31 murals that have been painted on the flood walls on the levee. They depict the history of Vicksburg and were quite large.

Dedication of the Illinois Monument in 1906

Teddy Roosevelt went bear hunting a little bit north of Vicksburg.  His guide caught a bear, tied it to a tree and told Teddy to shoot it.  Teddy refused and this is where Teddy Bears came from or so they say

Downtown Vicksburg

River Scene

Sultana was a Mississippi River side-wheel steamboat. On April 27, 1865, the boat exploded in the worst maritime disaster in United States history. She was designed with a capacity of only 376 passengers, but she was carrying 2,155 when three of the boat's four boilers exploded and she burned to the waterline and sank near Memphis, Tennessee, killing 1,192 passengers.(Wikipedia)

I stayed at the Rivertown RV Park which was your typical RV park where we are all lined up in a row. I started talking to this woman and it turns out she is from Minnesota as I am. Interesting, she lives in Rosemount where my son used to live. Turns out her name is Cindy also. Hmmm. As I'm talking to her, I notice her sandals – they are the same exact sandals I have. Weird. Then I look at her shirt – I have the exact same shirt hanging in my closet. Evidently this is a woman with great taste and good breeding.

Delta Music and Poverty Point

Today was a sad day- my traveling buddies and I are going our separate ways – there are places to go, people to see. It is the end of some epic Happy Hours and hangin' with great friends. See y'all down the road buddies mine.

I tried to console myself with a quick run up to Ferriday, Louisiana – home of the Delta Music Museum. It is located in the original Ferriday post office. When I entered, I asked the guy what constitutes the Delta – it is everything from Memphis down to the Gulf. I thought to myself  'oh, this is going to be good – there are so many absolutely fabulous musicians – I cannot wait'.  I come to find out that there are only sixteen 'inductees' in this museum. Ok, ok – I guess I will lower my expectations a bit. Each of the sixteen had a wall plaque with a little bio and some pictures. There were a few who I knew and loved – Percy Sledge, Aaron Neville, Irma Thomas. There were some I knew and after listening to them a little, found I wanted to know more about – Conway Twitty, Fats Domino and some that I knew their big hits, but didn't know their names.

Conway Twitty's fans were called Twitty Birds

The big three in the museum are the cousins – Jerry Lee Lewis, Mickey Gilley and Jimmy Swaggert, all born in Ferriday. They were all born within a year of each other and they all learned to play piano together. They had a short performance film of all of the performers (probably the best part of this museum) and believe it or not, there were so many similarities between these three guys with their piano playing.  I was particularly surprised with Swaggart's playing - the guy could get down.

Wasn't Jerry Lee Lewis blond?  Just wondering.

Overall, it was interesting, but I probably wouldn't travel a far distance to see this museum.

I moved up to a tiny little out of the way spot in northeastern Louisiana, near the town of Epps. Any of you who have been reading this blog for a while know that I might possibly be a tiny bit obsessed with National Park sites. I do admit that I want to visit all 400 plus sites. Up in this little forgotten corner of the world is Poverty Point, which is not only a NPS site, it is also a World Heritage Site. There are only 23 World Heritage Sites in the United States. I think I now have another quest that will have to be done. Yessirreebob – hit all 23 of those sites.

Anyway, Poverty Point was built between 1650 and 700 BC which is amazing in itself. It is a series of earthworks and mounds. It was also a huge city during it's heyday. The biggest mound looks like a flying bird when seen from the air. They think when it was built, it was 100 feet tall. They built this mound by filling baskets with dirt and manually hauling it. Based on the size of the baskets,they estimate that it took 15 million basket loads of dirt to build this mound. I wasn't all that excited about the big mounds, but when you think of 15 million basketfuls - Yup, pretty amazing.

Doesn't look like much, just a hill.....15 million basketfuls!!

I climbed to the top of the Bird Mound - see my little car way down there?

We are staying at the Poverty Point Reservoir State Park. The campground is filled with fisherpeople and by the time I get up in the morning, the campground is completely deserted. Those fish get up early and those people trying to catch them have to be out there in the predawn hours. I was hoping to finally get some hiking done because Miko and I have been doing pretty much urban touristy things. Spring in Louisiana is pretty soggy – nothing but rain, it seems. Unless you want to go wading, hiking doesn't seem to be much of an option.

I guess the trail ends here ....seriously, we are on the trail.  

Timeless Beauty...Endless Fun

We rolled into Natchez, Mississippi – rather we rolled into Vidalia, Louisiana to a sweet little RV park that was right on the Mighty Mississippi, right across the bridge from Natchez. We could watch the barges going up and down the river and at night we could see the lights of Natchez. There was a waterfront walkway that went for a mile and a half where Miko could stretch her legs. We stayed for four nights, it was so nice. The title of this posting is actually the city slogan for Natchez.

Natchez is all about the big houses in town that the plantation owners built for their families. There was an interesting juxtaposition between these grand houses that lay dotted all around Natchez and their next door neighbors whose houses were run down, needing paint and sometimes doors and windows. Before we did anything else, we, of course, had to head over to the National Park Service to the Natchez National Historical Park. This Historical Park consisted of three different sites, but we decided to just tour the 'Big House' Melrose. Melrose was first occupied in 1849 and it represents one of the most completely preserved antebellum estates in Natchez with many original furnishings and outbuildings.

Davey asked Ranger Barney, a tall black man, how he felt about being a black man working at an estate that was built on the backs of slave labor. Ranger Barney stood up and very emphatically told us. He was wonderful, aggressive and direct and had so many quotable lines that I wish I could remember them all. To paraphrase: 'You can't change history, history is truth'. 'They weren't servants, they were slaves'. 'You can't embarrass ignorance' and so on. When the conversation turned to fixing ignorance, Davey closed the discussion with 'Duct Tape will fix ignorance' as he pantomimed putting duct tape across his mouth. What a card that Davey is.

We were looking for some lunch and ended up at King's Tavern, highly recommended. King's Tavern is located in the basement of the oldest house in Natchez and the food was super. Highlights were a crawfish pot pie and a crawfish corn chowder.

We toured a mansion called Longwood which was really unique and is on the National Register of Historic Places. It was built by a cotton planter named Haller Nutt and it eventually became known as Nutt's Folly. It is an octagonal mansion that was started before the civil war but only the basement was completely finished before the owner lost all his money and died. His widow and eight children lived in the basement for many years after that. We could not tour the basement because a water pipe had broken with all the cold weather they have been having and it flooded the basement. We ended up looking in the windows at all the fancy furnishings. We did get to tour the unfinished upper floor and it was amazing, the artistic vision this man had. It is too bad it wasn't finished, it would have been a sight to see.

Longwood

Side Note: In 2010, Longwood was used in the HBO series 'True Blood' for the external shots of the mansion of Russell Edgington, the Vampire King of Mississippi and Louisiana.

On the tour of Longwood, with us, were a couple of African-American women. They would correct the docent when she would talk about the servants of the house and say 'You mean slaves?' After they left, the docent came up to me and asked me if I felt she had offended these women. I was able to channel Ranger Barney from the day before and get into a discussion about how history should be presented. Ranger Barney would have been so proud of me.

The one touristy thing that I think I enjoyed most about Natchez was in a Presbyterian Church. It was an exhibit of historical photographs from the 1850s up to about 1910 which provided an insight into Natchez life during this period. There were two room that I found fascinating. The first room was filled with portraits of all the fancy ladies in town with their very fancy dresses. Besides the photographs themselves, what made this room so interesting were the captions. 'Although Miss Peale is shown with a very shy expression, the folds of her dress are filled with exuberance.' I loved seeing the fashion through the ages and am so very glad that nowadays, I can wear my denim. The other room that I liked very much was filled with portraits of Victorian children. Very cute kids with very extravagant outfits. The rest of the exhibit was filled with buildings and day-to-day life in Natchez, while interesting, did not engage me like the women and kids.

The ladies of Natchez - sorry for the glare

St Mary's Basilica - I always seem to take pictures of Jesus hangin' a bit to the left - wonder why that is?

Visited a park that commemorated fallen Confederate soldiers

We did eat at Cotton Alley Cafe which was filled with Pier I type of furnishings, but my food was excellent. I had Jambalaya and it was such a huge portion, it lasted me several meals.

And last but not least - I really have issues with heights and Dave was nice enough to get up on my roof and clean it - first time in four years.

Yay Dave!!!!

Off The Beaten Path

I seem to have had a major technological mishap whereas my pictures for the next couple of stops seem to have mysteriously disappeared. Also disappearing were a lot of photos that I took of Andri's last days. I'm a little heartbroke about that, but maybe Google will be able to tell me where oh where they have gone. Not all my pictures disappeared, just a chunk of them. What this means is that y'all (see, I've gone southern) will just have to depend on my dulcet tones and your imagination. Count this as an educational post.

We traveled to a expo center just south of Baton Rouge for a night. This was another scenic view overlooking the livestock pens. It was only for one night, so no big deal. We were here to go to the National Hansen's Disease Museum in Carville to explore the world of Leprosy. Ewww, gross you say. No – it was interesting. The only thing I knew about leprosy was from watching the movie 'Ben Hur' as a child where leprosy sufferers were highly infectious and their fingers and toes would fall off. I guess you could call me well-informed?

The museum is located inside a military base (National Guard) so, after being corrected by the guard on duty as to the correct entrance lane I needed to use (note: it is right in front of the big ENTRANCE sign) and showing my ID, we were allowed to come on base. This museum is dedicated to leprosy patients, once quarantined on site, and the medical staff who attended to them and made medical history.

Falsehood #1

Back in the day, until very recently, leprosy was considered very contagious and there were laws that quarantined the afflicted. It was basically a life sentence for these people. In fact, only 5% of the entire population (all races are afflicted, except for Native Americans) are able to contract the disease. It is caused by a bacteria and is not communicable.

Falsehood #2

Your toes and fingers don't fall off. Leprosy causes nerve damage and you don't feel anything in your extremities. According to the museum, after many times of injuring yourself by banging/burning/etc yourself, the bones in your extremities get reabsorbed by the body. Weird science.

The museum focused on life in the institution and also on the research that was done. A Dr. Hansen found a cure for leprosy that actually reversed many of the outward effects of the disease (although toes and fingers did not grow back) and the name has been changed to Hansen's disease. There is a crusade to ban the word leprosy because of the awful connotations that it has had in the past. Nowadays, people are not quarantined, they are treated and live full lives. This was an interesting place to spend an afternoon.

We moved on to Angola Louisiana, home of the infamous Angola prison. Angola is the second largest prison (in area) in the world. It is a maximum security prison and is the only prison that has a prison museum on it's grounds. There are 5,000 prisoners here of which 71% are serving a life sentence and there are 80 prisoners on death row. Big numbers.

There were the usual? exhibits where you could walk into a typical cell or you could see all the handmade weapons that were confiscated from the prisoners. There was a short movie about how Angola grows all the vegetables that the prison needs. There was a Correctional Officer Hall of Fame room and also an exhibit about Correctional Officers who had given their life at the prison.

We were then walked past double rows of some form of slasher barbed wire into the old death row building. Louisiana now uses fatal injection but they are having trouble getting the chemical so there have been no executions. We saw an electric chair. We then went into the cell block where they kept the death row prisoners and heard about how they spent the remainder of their lives. I felt great sorrow here – it was truly sad.

There have been several movies filmed in this section of the prison – a George Clooney movie, 'JFK' starring Kevin Costner and the horrific movie with Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon called 'Dead Man Walking' which was based on a composite of three actual prisoners. I don't remember much in life, but I vividly remember this last movie and how utterly devastating it was. I'm glad I went to the Angola museum, but it was one of the harder places I've been.

I was going to call this post 'Leprosy and Death Row' but thought that would be a bit much.