Tour de Tennessee: Lookout Mountain & Sunset Rock - Chattanooga TN

Tour de Tennessee: Lookout Mountain & Sunset Rock – Chattanooga TN

8/22/20 – 4 Miles

We’d heard that Chattanooga is an outdoor lover’s playground for hiking, backpacking, biking, and paddling, but is it so during a pandemic? The answer is…it depends. Teasing out current information about COVID-related closures and protocols was challenging. A Venn diagram of what was open, when it’s open, and personal restrictions (no crowded indoor spaces) left us with just a couple of options. Maybe next time, Rock City, Ruby Falls, and the Incline Railway. We’ll check out Lookout Mountain a different way.

Lookout Mountain is a broad ridge that sprawls across the borders of Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee, and has been a witness to centuries of historic conflicts, most recently the Civil War. Aside from the human infrastructure on top of the mountain and the portions designated as part of the National Park Service (Point Park and Cravens House), there are 30+ miles of hiking trails. Jim and I were just looking for a little morning hike with a great view. 

Chickamauga & Chattanooga National Military Park has several locations, including Lookout Mountain. If you’re looking for information in that regard, you won’t find it in this blog post, but here are some links for you:

Chickamauga & Chattanooga National Military Park main website here
Lookout Mountain here
Cravens House here 
Lookout Mountain Trail system here

Access to Point Park was closed. Cravens House was also closed but the parking was open, so we at least had a starting point to the Bluff Mountain Trail to Sunset Rock.

[Our rambling sort-of-a-loop route: Cravens House Trail to Bluff Mountain Trail to Sunset Rock, then return via Bluff Mountain Trail (below Umbrella Rock) to Mountain Beautiful Trail to Cravens-to-Mountain-Beautiful Trail back to the parking area.]

Here we go!

At the base of the Bluffs

Blooming kudzu 

We spent our afternoon doing touristy-because-we’re-tourists kinds of things like the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum and the fabulous Hunter Museum (both open with COVID protocols and masks). We walked across the Walnut Street Bridge to get ice cream and then walked back to Coolidge Park.

[Nashville, Memphis and Chattanooga all have something that Charlotte doesn’t have: a river running through it with lovely pedestrian bridges.]

Chattanooga Choo-Choos - All aboard!

Featured in the exhibit titled “THE F WORD: We Mean FEMALE”

Photo taken from the Walnut Street Bridge – The Hunter Museum sitting on a bluff overlooking
the Tennessee River and a squiggly section of the Riverwalk

Walnut Street Bridge

Coolidge Park

Our time in Chattanooga barely scratched the surface of outdoor and urban fun to be had around the area. We will return post-COVID to check out more trails on Lookout Mountain and Point Park (for real) and sections of the Cumberland Trail and nearby state parks and Chickamauga Lake and Montague Park and the Bessie Smith Cultural Center and…

…and we haven’t even talked about the breweries…Chattanooga Brewing Company, Big Frog Brewing Company, Naked River Brewing…

Jim and I had a grand Tour de Tennessee, looking for adventure in what turned out to be the early days of COVID-19. Here’s to brighter, safer, healthier days ahead! Cheers!

“Travel – it leaves you speechless,
then turns you into a storyteller.”
~Ibn Battuta

Tour de Tennessee: Big River Crossing & Shelby Farms Park - Memphis TN

Tour de Tennessee: Big River Crossing & Shelby Farms Park

Memphis TN – 8/17 & 8/18/20

Note: For this post I’ll be exercising prodigious utilization of my thesaurus so I don’t wear out my big superlative words. 

Our Wednesday in Memphis was extraordinary and our Thursday was sensational, both far exceeding expectations. Our preplanned events worked without a hitch and our unplanned time was serendipity to the max. In summary: we enjoyed every minute.

Wednesday started with an absorbing tour of the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel. With COVID precautions, advance tickets, a strictly reduced number of viewers and mandatory masks, we felt very safe walking through this incredible history exhibit in sobering silence. The scope of the museum cannot be fully appreciated in one visit. If you have time for only one activity as you pass through Memphis, this is it.

After lunch at The Arcade Restaurant, we scouted around for an access to the edge of the Mississippi River. We parked at Martyrs Park on the Riverwalk and walked over to the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge, which includes a pedestrian walkway called the Big River Crossing. We’re going to Arkansas!  

The state line with the Memphis skyline in the background

After we had walked across the mile-long bridge to Arkansas, we found a bike rental kiosk
and picked up wheels to continue down the paved path to the riverside

Toes in the sand of the Mighty Mississippi – life list check #1!

Rode our bikes back across the bridge to Tennessee

Life list check #2 – We stopped in at the Peabody Hotel for a cool drink after the bike ride and just happened to catch the Peabody Duck March! For all our precautions on the Tour de Tennessee, this was the only event that was a little bit mask loosey-goosey (see what I did there?) 

Thursday’s thrill was visiting Graceland – life list check #3! For years I’ve imagined what it’s like, but the idea of crowds and kitsch seemed like too much. Well, turns out that the crowds were away so we could play! Entry was contactless, pre-purchased tickets only. Forehead temperatures scans and masks were required. The shuttle bus from the visitor center to the home was limited to 8 people out of 20 seats. No tour guides, just self-guided audio in groups of 8, allowing for easy social distancing. Jim and I intentionally lagged behind and were the only people in each room that we walked through. 

Yes, it's open, but not a soul in sight

In the Jungle Room

There’s more to the Graceland phenomenon than the big house, and we took a quick run through most of the exhibit buildings of cars, hit records, and movie memorabilia. Very few people anywhere.

How could we rinse off all that glitz and excess? We needed a natural adventure at Shelby Farms Park. This place is amazeballs [yes, that is in the thesaurus], five times the size of Central Park in NYC, includes 20 bodies of water (!), just a 20-minute drive from downtown Memphis (also connected via an impressive greenway system).

Our impromptu visit was limited, the bike rental place was closed (COVID), so we got info at the visitor center and took a short hike on the Tour de Wolf Trail to stretch our legs. 

A teeny section of the park trails map

The Tour de Wolf is an easy hiking and mountain biking trail that we accessed by parking at Beaver Lake. The terrain is a mix of woods and open meadows and very few people on a hot afternoon. Trail markers were scarce, and we took a shortcut to cut the hike to about 3 miles.

A hawk sitting on top of a bat box by the edge of the meadow

One last look at Beaver Lake

Nighttime strolling around the Cooper-Young neighborhood, we found dinner at Soul Fish Café and discussed a someday return visit to Memphis. While it was nice to avoid crowds, the cost of that was closed businesses, restaurants and breweries, and Beale Street was as quiet as Broadway was in Nashville. There's so much more to experience here.

“Saw the ghost of Elvis on Union Avenue

Followed him up to the gates of Graceland

Then I watched him walk right through

Now security they did not see him

They just hovered 'round his tomb

But there's a pretty little thing

Waiting for the King

Down in the Jungle Room

Walking in Memphis…” 
~Marc Cohn

Tour de Tennessee: Fall Creek Falls State Park & Timberland Park

Tour de Tennessee: Fall Creek Falls State Park & Timberland Park TN – 8/16/20 – 3 Miles

Is there such a thing as a reasonably safe vacation during a pandemic? Never mind, there are opinions across the spectrum about that. Like most everyone, Jim and I had cancelled traditional travel plans, walked around our block a million times, and biked and hiked with extreme caution. What is the risk assessment of a week-long driving vacation and Airbnb? Where could we possibly go in August? Visiting family in New Jersey was out (quarantine), going south was too hot, and going west was too far. What states are “open”?

Welcome to our Tour de Tennessee!

It was Jim’s idea to drive a big loop from Charlotte to Knoxville-Nashville-Memphis-Chattanooga and back to Charlotte. We researched these cities on their COVID policies (open hours, max capacity). We had friends in Knoxville to stay with the first night, and then spent multiple days in each city after that, seeing the sights and eating on patios and visiting breweries - and of course a little hiking and biking. 

Between Knoxville and Nashville, we checked out Fall Creek Falls State Park.

To be truthful, we didn’t allow much time for the park, just wanted to hit the highlight of the namesake waterfall, a 256-foot plunge billed as the tallest waterfall of its kind east of the Mississippi River. Who wouldn’t want to see that?

Unfortunately for us, on this humid August day the waterfall was not at her best, a disappointingly low flow that was difficult to capture in a photo. The cirque created by the waterfall is massive and gives an idea of what could be…but wasn’t. The view from the overlook:

Can you see where the waterfall is?

Does a closeup help?

The view across the valley away from the falls is lovely

We had enough time to hike the Base of the Falls Trail, about .7 miles roundtrip, and we were glad we did. The trail is well-worn and at some points there are fence railings, but footing is not to be taken lightly. One slip or stumble and you might have yourself a broken something.

Tiny Jim following the trail along the base of the rock wall

Approaching the base of the falls,
the flow is hitting the rocks above the far edge of the pool

Although the flow was a trickle of the waterfall’s capacity and invisible to the camera, it was still an impressive rain shower up close, loud enough to make you shout, and it created a nice breeze in the shade of the cirque. A few brave souls (okay, young guys) were wading in, and one fellow sat underneath long enough for his girlfriend to snap a photo.

Time to go back up the hill

Proceeding on towards Nashville, we had one more planned stop to check out the Natchez Trace Parkway near Franklin (south of Nashville). But what’s this??? 

My maiden name is Arrington and, like the McCarthys in Ireland,
you should never pass a place with your name on it. 

It gets better – there’s a winery with my name on it!

Back to our planned stop. Jim happened to have a bicycle in the back of the car, so he took it for a ride on the Natchez Trace Parkway.

The Double Arch Bridge at the northern entrance to the parkway

During that time, I roamed a couple of miles through Timberland Park.  Like many small parks, a lot of trails are packed into its 72 acres, with color-coded blazes and lots of intersections. Their trail map is easy to understand and includes topo lines to give a sense of up and down. The visitor center was open with COVID precautions. I arrived back at the parking lot just as Jim appeared.

I think Jim had a good time

The rest of our time in Nashville was a mixed bag of open and closed restaurants and attractions, and Broadway was sleepy, but we found a lot to do (the Shelby Street Bridge and the Johnny Cash Museum!). Our visit also coincided (unintentionally but wonderfully) with the 100th anniversary of the women’s right to vote ratified in Nashville on August 17, 1920. There were celebrations and skydivers and…but that’s a story for another day. Right now it’s time for dinner…

Smokin Thighs has an extensive moonshine selection

Here’s to the Tour de Tennessee!

“Ah, Summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.” ~Russell Baker