Chattanooga Choo Choo, Who?
The drive from Chattanooga, home of the Chattanooga Choo Choo (Glenn Miller fame), Ruby Falls (country’s largest underground waterfall), and the home of the largest and oldest Military Park in the nation, to Gatlinburg, gateway to the Smoky Mountain National Park, showed off Tennessee’s finest Fall colors.
The trees were resplendent in their golden, orange and scarlet vestments, defying the storm of the day before, and the light rain and mist falling on us as we drove. Gatlinburg is a tourist town full of miniature golf, pancake houses, fudge and candy stores, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, Guinness Book of World Records, Moonshine distilleries, souvenir stores, motels, resorts and campgrounds.
We checked in just in time before the rain , and took the road through the National Park the next day. The first thing we saw was the same group of idiots blocking traffic that we had been stuck behind in Yellowstone. Ok, maybe they were different idiots. But what do you call people who park in the middle of the road and walk into the forest to get a photo of a black bear cub? First, don’t we all know that bears should be left alone? And haven’t we all heard about mama bears coming after people for interfering with their cubs? Not to mention how stupid it is to park in the middle of the road with cars backed up for a couple of miles...
The rest of the drive went very smoothly and we were presented with draw dropping beauty: Rivers and creeks, trees and mountains in a brilliant farewell to Fall. We eventually ended up in the Cherokee reservation. The over abundance of moccasin and Indian jewelry stores, old mobile homes and collections of rusty cars and piled up trash made me sad. I am not a Native American. Although the reservation solution gave Native Americans their own sovereignty, it seems to have denied them many options in their quest to maintain their culture alive, and still thrive in a world and economy that is literally and figuratively outside of theirs.
The Smoky Mountain National Park is the most visited of our national parks, and is a beautiful place to observe nature, hike, camp, or just contemplate the universe.
