Welcome To "Tennessee"!

Another perfect day my friends.

First of all, I’d like to start this post thanking once again Todd for his hospitality and his being the way he is; he made us feel like home, and most of all, he hang around with us, which is great! Thanks for joining yesterday at the meat orgy, “Chima”, the Brazilian steakhouse was superb.

My thanks also to our dear friend George down in Fort Lauderdale for giving Todd our number and making all of this possible; it is really true, good people attract good people.

As I said at the beginning, another perfect day.
We started with a coffee and a jelly donut at Dunkin Donuts while on our way to Stone Mountain, GA!

I was so much looking forward to visiting Stone Mountain, see the carving, and enjoy the sky ride, and the trip to the Park didn’t absolutely disappoint me. Something I totally underestimated is the size of the park itself, it’s huge, with several different areas inside, four entrances, and many different attractions someone can experience while at Stone Mountain.

To me this is a prelude to Mount Rushmore, SD; I had shiver running down my spine today when I saw the carving, I can’t really imagine what is going to happen when we get to South Dakota.

Stone Mountain took us about 2 hours to go through, we went to the top of the “rock” and back down with the cable car, then we visited the “Carillion”, and subsequently we decided to head out NW towards Chattanooga, TN.

Welcome to Tennessee road sign:

Chattanooga here we come!

Still at this point I can’t actually believe I’m in Tennessee! LOL For an Italian like me it sounds so exotic to be here, and the people are so different from what I’m used to in Florida, some are “scary”, and some are very pleasant, makes you want to know more about this state.

Our stop in Chattanooga, TN, has been unfortunately a brief one, but nonetheless we enjoyed every second of it. We went to “Lookout Mountain” and enjoyed the “Incline Railway” called “The American Most Amazing Mile” which is also with 72.7% grade incline, the steepest passenger railway in the world!

As you can see we’re still looking for “biggest/largest/tallest/deepest” and many other “est” here in the US. There will be a lot more to come, don’t worry about that.

I should probably say that what made the ride on the cable car more interesting was probably the young married couple with two kids; they had a great TN accent (which I absolutely love), but what was even better than that was the small boy they had. Guess what his name was: Yeah, you got that right, it was BUBBA!!! The guy absolutely made my day…

I should mention that the ticket for the railroad was round-trip, so it basically takes you up there, and then back down; while we were up, we noticed that only three blocks away from the entrance to the cable car they have “Chickamauga & Chattanooga Battlefield Park” to commemorate the bloodiest two days in American History. It is America’s first National Military Park. The park commemorates the men who fought and died here, whether they wore blue or gray, really worth a visit.

The drive up to Lookout Mountain is certainly as good as reaching the final destination; it was amazing to see how many nice pieces of real estate are up there overlooking the Chattanooga area, and the Great Smoky Mountains who can be seen on clear sunny day at a 100 miles distance.

Right now I’m writing you from a hotel room in Knoxville, TN. We decided to keep moving NE in order to be able tomorrow to be in Sevierville, Gatlinburg (for the scenic by-way through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park), and who knows, maybe reach Asheville, NC before dawn, find a place where to sleep, and then just enjoy the city and what it has to offer, the day after with absolutely NO pressure.

For tomorrow there are also many things scheduled in our program, I doubt we will be able to do everything, but we will try. I’ll obviously keep you posted and let you know about our progress tomorrow evening.

Before I go, my quote for the day, since we’re here in Tennessee and it looks a lot like a Bible Belt State to me, here it is: “Jesus is coming, look busy!” ;-)

That’s really all for the day.

Warmest Regards,
Nico