We left Cumberland Gap on a Friday afternoon, headed for Mississippi and a Samaritan’s Purse tornado clean-up. We were going to jet there quickly because clean-ups are worked 7 days a week, but since it was just beginning, they weren’t starting until Monday.
Since we had a little bit of extra time, on Saturday we stopped by the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, located on the border of Georgia and Tennessee. 
We stopped at the Chickamauga site first, and the rangers there were kind enough to let us leave the RV parked alongside the road, in the park, for the day. We would have parked in the big rig parking lot, but it was full of cars, and we could not navigate it. The ranger apologized, and said that people in cars and trucks constantly park there even when there are regular car spots. 🙁
In the visitor’s center, we watched the short film on the park, and checked out their museum…
The museum is spread out between a couple of spots on either side of the building.
There is even a fabulous gun collection that was donated to the museum by a private donor, and is housed in the visitor’s center. 
There are more than 300 rifles and carbines, and a few pistols. 
We thought that these sections of trees, with cannon balls embedded in them from the Civil War battles, were very interesting – check out how the trees continued to grow around the balls… 
A sign from the slavery display… 
There are cannon placed throughout the park… 
Chickamauga was a victory for the Confederates in Sept. of 1863. 
The park is beautiful with treed areas and wide open fields. Like all the battlefields, there are a lot of memorials placed throughout the park (over 1400)… 
We saw quite a few people enjoying the park from horseback, or riding bikes. 
One of the most unique things about the park is this lookout memorial… 
We didn’t count the steps to the top, but it was an easy climb… 
and the view from the top was gorgeous… 
We drove all the roads in the park (in the van), and checked out a bunch of the memorials, but we didn’t do any of the hiking paths since we still wanted to get to the Chattanooga location the same day. 
The kids did as much of their Jr. Ranger work at the Chickamauga site as they could, then we drove over to the Chattanooga site. 
There they have the cutest little visitor’s center… 
that has a cute little gift shop and a small room where this incredible painting is displayed…
Across the street is Point Park… 
Inside Point Park, are more cannon… 
and memorials… 
The trees in the park were flowering… 
The kids finished up their Jr. Ranger work, and we turned their stuff in at that cute little visitor’s center. Then it was time to run back to Chickamauga to pick up the truck and 5er, then hit the road to get a little closer to Mississippi! We did get a little closer, but just a little…
before we were stopped with a blowout! On the Alabama/Georgia border, we had a tire come apart. (course, if you ‘like’ The TicknorTribe on FB, you knew about it right when it happened! LOL!) It was our first blow-out in nearly 4 years of being in our RV, so we really can’t complain! And, since the tread wound itself around the axle, it didn’t damage the rv or the other tires, which we are so thankful for! The guys had to cut the tire off the axle with a pair of bolt cutters (WHY do we have a pair of bolt cutters in the RV? I have no clue, but we sure were glad that we had them!). But with all my big guys, it wasn’t long before they had us back on the road!
Speak Your Mind