The cabin was so rustic in fact, I had to cook breakfast outside! The one thing that drove me crazy, was that we couldn’t turn off the porch light. We had a collection of the most monstrous moths waiting to fly in each time we opened the door.
We visited the Chickamauga National Battle Field Park, and came across this homesteader cabin. I really felt the history of the area really came to me. The family that lived here truly lived by their own abilities to provide for themselves. They raised crops in the fields that surrounded their home and grazed cattle in the pastures and forest beyond. They had no supermarket to run to if any crops failed, no fast food joints to grab a bite because they don’t have time to cook, no big orange box store to conveniently pick up building supplies. If they lacked any diligence in their daily lives, they set the stage for loss of food or shelter. But, when the Armies of the North and South converged on this family’s home in September of 1863, they fled to hide in a ravine about a mile away. Now, no matter how hard they had worked and prepared, they now had to start over from scratch with the help of a few distant neighbors. How many modern Americans could hack it like this family did? Very few I’d wager.
At Coolidge Park in Chattanooga is this 100 year old bridge. It is now pedestrian and bicycle only as two other nearby bridges carry vehicle traffic over the Tennessee River. Here there is a restored carousel, river boats, and a fountain kids young and old can play in. But what really attracted me here was the “wallnut.” What’s that? you say. Well, someone decided to turn one of the limestone columns into a climbing wall. I’ve never climbed before and it was a blast!
Katie didn’t try it, she said she got pretty nervous the higher I went.
