Chattanooga

A friendly black and white cat turned up at the cabin the previous day, and he has been hanging around, walking the perimeter of the handrail on the rear deck of the cabin and poised to leap inside when the door is open.

 

After we left Natchez Trace State Park, we decided we had had enough of I-40 and found a more scenic route to our next destination, Chattanooga.  It was 40 miles slower and, as in the past, our GPS kept frantically telling us to turn toward the Interstate, but we turned down the volume and it finally shrugged and gave up.  We instead played “Margaritaville” on the sound system.  It was a good, winding road through Tennessee countryside, and we saw some interesting sights, more than we ever would have out on the Interstate.

Our backroads route eventually led us to US-64 – the same road that goes from Murphy to Manteo in North Carolina, and right through Highlands – and it took us to Lawrenceburg, home of Davy Crockett.  There was a tall statue of him in the town square, and after circling it a few times we found a restaurant open called The Pie Factory, which according to a complete stranger on the sidewalk out front made delicious pizzas.  The stranger was correct!
 

Our waitress was a pretty young girl named Azia, and she had a tattoo on her arm, which we asked about (we never fail to ask).  She read it to us:  “Trust in yourself.”  I hope she finds her dream and trusts in herself, and in other people, too.  This little town was a pretty one, and we wondered if that was her dream, to remain here serving pizza to mostly local friends, or if she would seek wider horizons.

 

We arrived in busy Chattanooga and checked in to our hotel for the night, the Riverview Inn.  Martha had once again selected an interesting place, high on a bluff overlooking Chattanooga and the Tennessee River. 

 

We braved the busy Saturday night traffic and headed into the nearby commercial area looking for a place to eat dinner, and found 1885 Grill, which served seafood and allowed us yet another opportunity to eat outdoors on a covered terrace.  Doesn’t food always taste better outdoors?

 

Then we drove back to the Inn and chatted with a couple around the fire-pit.  She was a nurse and he was a science teacher, and we got into a discussion about the short attention span of today's students.  We returned to our room and watched the sunset from our balcony.  We were almost home!