Georgia On My Mind

My brother and I landed in Atlanta at about 5:30 AM local time. By the time we retrieved our bags and got our rental car (a Chevy Malibu) it was about 6:30. So far as Civil War sites go, there's little to see in Atlanta since General Sherman had all of it but about 400 buildings burnt to the ground.

The plan for the first day of our trip was to visit Lookout Mountain. We drove from Atlanta to Chattanooga and parked at St. Elmo Station of the Lookout Mountain Incline Railway. Half the adventure of visiting Lookout Mountain is taking the steep train ride up the side of the mountain. With a 72.7% incline, it's the steepest passenger railway ride in the world. The train travels at about ten miles per hour and takes about ten minutes to reach the station at the top of Lookout Mountain. Once we arrived at the top, we took some photos of Chattanooga and the Tennessee River from the observation deck at the station.

Next we walked a few blocks to the Lookout Mountain Battlefield which is part of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park. (The other part is the Chickamauga Battlefield at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia which we will visit tomorrow.) The Battle of Lookout Mountain was part of the Chattanooga Campaign, a pivotal victory for the Union which gave it control of Tennessee and with it, Chattanooga, the gateway to the deep south.  We took pictures of the various monuments, markers and scenery. We also took more pictures of Chattanooga and the Tennessee River from various points in the park.

After a couple of hours on Lookout Mountain, we took the incline train back down to Chattanooga so we could check into our hotel and get ready for that night's baseball game between the Chattanooga Lookouts and the Carolina Mudcats. On the way to the hotel, we stopped at Cheeburger Cheeburger in downtown Chattanooga. It's a burger joint whose name was inspired by the famous Olympia Cafe sketches featuring John Belushi in the early days of  the Saturday Night Live.

We finally got checked into our hotel at about 3:00. We each had an afternoon nap before getting cleaned up and driving to AT&T Field, where the Lookouts play their home games. The Lookouts (affiliated with the Los Angeles Dodgers) and Mudcats (affiliated with the Cincinnati Reds) are members of the class AA Southern League.

AT&T Field is in downtown Chattanooga, a short distance from the Tennessee River. The most interesting part of the ballpark is its giant ceiling fans that hang over the stands to provide a cooling breeze for the fans. The blades on these fans are the size of propellers such as you'd see on a World War II bomber aircraft. I've been to ballparks all over the U.S. and Canada and this is the only place I've seen such a thing.

The game was kind of sloppy with the Mudcats beating the Lookouts 6-3. Among the participants were the sons of former major leaguers Robin Yount and Andy Van Slyke.

We enjoyed the game and the ballpark but we couldn't wait to get back to our hotel and get a full night's sleep. Except for brief naps during our overnight flight and Friday afternoon, we'd been on the go since leaving Castro Valley on Thursday evening.

More pictures from Chattanooga can be found here.