Category: National Park

The Chattanooga Choo Choo, Chickamauga, Chicken Shawerma, and more…

I’ve blown by Chattanooga a bunch of times on Interstate 24 and I’ve seen the sign for the Chattanooga Choo Choo.  I always wanted to stop to see it.  But I never had.  Until today, that is.  Yep, there really is such a thing…

The real deal: The Chattanooga Choo Choo. It’s on display behind a hotel of the same name, just a hop, skip, and a jump from the Interstate and downtown Chattanooga’s other attractions.

This is my first visit to this fine southern city, and folks, I’m here to tell you:  Chattanooga is a fabulous town.  I had no idea.  This is a wonderful place, nestled along the Tennessee River close to the Georgia border.   The Chattanooga Choo Choo.  Lookout Mountain and Ruby Falls.  Moon Pies (yep, for real).   Great walking paths.  Nearby Chickamauga Battlefield National Park.  An incredible Civil War rifle collection.  Dining that makes the word “fabulous” seem wholly inadequate.  The verdict is in: I like this place!

So, what’s the deal with Moon Pies?  Hey, if you’ve never heard of Moon Pies, you need to get out more often.   And if you’ve never tasted one, well, trust me on this:   You owe yourself this treat.  It turns out that Chattanooga is where Moon Pies are made, you can get them in just about any local store, and there’s actually an official Moon Pie factory outlet in downtown Chattanooga.  That fact, all by itself, makes Chattanooga a bucket list destination!

Chattanooga: Home of the Moon Pie.
Heaven in multipack cartons. We bought several to bring home.
And we sampled a few, too. That other treat? That’s a Goo Goo, another local treat made in nearby Nashville, but that’s a story for another blog.

Lookout Mountain is another cool spot in Chattanooga, with an underground cave system that actually includes a 140-foot waterfall (all of which is underground).  Think Jules Verne and a journey to the center of the earth.  Yep, we hit it, too!

Deep in Lookout Mountain, headed for Ruby Falls.
Imagine what it must have been like to discover this while exploring an underground cave. Meet Ruby Falls, 140-ft tall, and all underground.

We had an incredible lunch at The 405, a place we just happened upon while walking around downtown.  The 405 is a Middle Eastern restaurant (I love Middle Eastern food) and it’s another one of Chattanooga’s best kept secrets.  I had a chicken shawerma sandwich and it was fabulous, with juicy roasted chicken, a perfect Tahini sauce, and pita bread made fresh on the premises.  I told our waitress I write a blog for the most discerning riders on the planet (that would be you), and the owner was at my table in a heartbeat.  It turns out that my new good buddy and restauranteur Rashad is one of us.  He rides a BMW sport bike, and we had a conversation about the great roads in the Chattanooga area.   Rashad told me you can ride 51 weeks out of the year in and around Chattanooga and the way he described the roads, this sounds like a place where I need to spend more time.  From my explorations around this region, I believe him.  I have to get back here.  And when you get out here, you have to try The 405.  Tell Rashad Joe sent you.

From downtown, it was a short ride to the Chickamauga and Chattahoochee National Military Park.   We were lucky.   It was Veteran’s Day, and the National Park Service was giving free guided tours.  I think they do that every day, but seeing this sacred place on this grand holiday (on the 100th Anniversary of the end of World War I) made it even more interesting.  Our guide was another new good buddy, in this case Ranger Chris.

Good buddy Ranger Chris on the Chickamauga battlefield.

Chris led a motor tour to three stops on the Chickamauga battlefield, and he made it come alive for us.  If you’ve never been to Chickamauga, my advice is to put it on your list.  Chickamauga and Gettysburg (fought just a few days apart) marked the turning point of the Civil War.   We thoroughly enjoyed Chris’ presentation and the tour.

One of the best parts of the Chickamauga stop was the visitor’s center.  It has several cannon on display, and a large map showing the battlefield.

Chris’s materials and his Ranger campaign hat. Good stuff at the Chickamauga visitor center.
The business end of one of many cannon on display at the Chickamauga site.

The Chickamauga visitor center also houses one of the best (probably the best) collection of Civil War rifles I’ve ever seen.   It seems a local engineer and gun collector named Claud Fuller had built a collection of some 5,000 firearms and he donated a portion of his collection for permanent display here.   They are magnificent.  This collection, all by itself, justifies a trip to the area.

One of several halls displaying Civil War rifles from the Fuller collection.
Fiddleback maple on a black powder rifle. These are beautiful firearms.
A presentation-grade Spencer. I could have spent all day just looking at these rifles.
Color case hardening on a Remington Hepburn rifle. This is amazing work.
Several Trapdoor Springfields on display. These fire the 45 70 cartridge, one of the all time greats. The second one from the right is an Officer’s Model Trapdoor Springfield. I had never seen one before. I would have joined the Army just to get one of these!

After spending the afternoon at Chickamauga, we had dinner at the 1885 restaurant in Chattanooga’s St. Elmo district.  I saw something on the menu I had never seen before:  Mushrooms and grits.  Hmmm, I wondered.  That sounded interesting.  And wow, was it ever!

Well, kiss my grits! This is before…
…and this is after. Yep, it was that good!

After dinner, our waitress recommended the cheese cake.  Hey, everything else had been amazing, so why not?

Lemon and cream cheesecake. It came with a discount coupon for the local Coronary Care Unit.

My dinner tonight was one of the finest I’ve ever enjoyed.  It was a great way to finish a Chattanooga visit.  I’m up for a summer ride in this area, and I’ll be back.   We’ll be home in California by the time you read this, and we’ll have a supply of Moon Pies for a short while.  Like my good buddy Reuben always says:  What a life!

The Atlantic Highlands…

New Jersey may not be a place you would ordinarily think of for a motorcycle ride, but I grew up back there and I’m here to tell you that you can have a good time on a motorcycle in the Garden State.   One of the rides I particularly like is along the Jersey shore from Pt. Pleasant to the Atlantic Highlands.  Once you’re in Pt. Pleasant, aim your front wheel north and do your best to hug the coastline.  It’s Highway 36 for much of that run (it’s called a highway, but it’s really a nice non-highway ride all the way up).   Your destination might be (as mine usually is) the Atlantic Highlands, Sandy Hook, and the Gateway National Recreation Area.

I have several recent photos from this area (I was there this past June), and rather than a long narrative, I thought I might simply share the captioned photos…

The view from Mt. Mitchill in the Atlantic Highlands, the highest point on the US east coast south of Maine. That’s the Manhattan skyline at the far horizon. The land across the bay is the actual “Sandy Hook.”
The 9/11 memorial atop Mt. Mitchill. The eagle is carrying an actual piece of I-beam from the Twin Towers. Everyone who lives around here knew people who died on that day.
Names of just a few who died in the Towers on the base of the 9/11 monument.
Another view of Sandy Hook Bay from Mt. Mitchell.
Sandy Hook Light, the oldest operating lighthouse in America. It was built in 1764, 12 years before American independence.
A Nike Ajax along Hartshorne Road, the entrance to the Gateway National Recreation Area, on the way into Fort Hancock.
The Nike Hercules air defense missile, directly across the street from the Nike Ajax shown above. These were a later missile, and they could be configured to carry a nuclear warhead.
Before Fort Hancock provided air defense for New York City, it used coastal artillery to protect the region from seaborne invaders. Some of these guns go back to the early 1800s.
Battery Potter, with steam-powered retractable hidden cannons. Sandy Hook was an early Army proving ground, and the advanced coastal artillery pieces hidden underground behind these walls were tested here. Boom boom!
Two young ladies checking out a hidden mortar base on Fort Hancock. The photo ops here are amazing.
An old Army building on Fort Hancock. Ah, the stories these places could tell…

And there you have it.   I like visiting New Jersey, and I never miss an opportunity to ride the Jersey shore.   I’m thinking it might make sense to keep a motorcycle back there.

Hmmmm…

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Burt’s stunning “I do” photo…

I posted this photo a year or so ago when I was writing the CSC blog, and it’s worth posting again.

Photo by good buddy Burt!

The Reader’s Digest version of the story goes like this:   When we did the Western America Adventure Ride (you can read all about that in 5000 Miles at 8000 RPM), one of the places my good buddy Baja John found to spend the night was Panguitch, Utah, just outside of Bryce Canyon National Park.  The area and the little town of Panguitch were a lot of fun, we were having a grand time, and then I got to feeling guilty.  That happens a lot on the group tours, and it’s because I’m not sharing the adventure with my girlfriend, Sue.   But I have an app for that…I do the trip again and bring Sue along.

Fast forward a couple of years, and Sue and I found ourselves waiting to be seated at the Cowboy BBQ, the best restaurant in Panguitch (there’s always a line to get in).  When we were seated, another couple came in behind us.  Burt saw my Nikon and asked if I was a photographer.   One thing led to another, and Sue and I and Burt and Roz had a great dinner that night.   We became good friends.

Fast forward a little more and Burt sent the above photo to me, but it was not just any photo.   Burt had just won a DPReview.com contest with it (the subject was newlyweds).

Nice work, Burt, and thanks for sharing your fabulous photo with us!

Petrified Forest National Park

Petrified Forest National Park, east of Flagstaff. It’s an awesome destination.

Sue and I recently completed a 2700-mile road trip in the Subie.   The idea was to drive a grand circle through the Southwest, with the apex of our trip being a visit with Joe Gresh at the Tinfiny Ranch in New Mexico.  I asked Joe what to see on the way out and back, and wow, did he have a great list.  Old Arjiu had a number of outstanding recommendations, one of which was the Petrified Forest in Arizona.  Petrified Forest National Park straddles I-40 (which was mostly built over old Route 66) and it was easy to get to.

The place sounded cool.  I’d never seen a petrified forest (or even a tree, for that matter).  I remembered being fascinated by dinosaurs and all things prehistoric when I was kid, and the concept of a petrified forest sure fit in that slot.

The Petrified Forest…wow.  As soon as Gresh mentioned the place, it became a bucket list item.  I had to see it.  We had to stop.

An abandoned car on what used to be Route 66.

Like I mentioned above, I-40 is mostly built over what used to be old US Route 66, and when you travel through Arizona, you see a lot of kitsch pertaining to The Mother Road.    The sun was in just the perfect location to bring out the best of my polarizer on the 16-35 Nikon lens when we stopped by an old abandoned automobile you see in the photo above.  There was a preserved stretch of Route 66 immediately behind it.   In that photo above, it looks like it was a deserted area.  Trust me on this: It was anything but.  There were tourists taking photos at that spot from Germany, Turkey, Portugal, Brazil, and more, and I can tell you from reading the body language they were all having a good time.  So were we.   We all took turns getting out of each other’s way as we took pictures.  It was fun.

We drove a little further down the road and came upon the area you see below.  This part of the National Park is called the Painted Desert, for obvious reasons…

The Painted Desert in central Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park. The colors really are this dramatic. This stop was a grand suggestion from Uncle Joe Gresh.

I was struck by just how beautiful the Petrified Forest National Park was, and then it hit me…I had driven this stretch if I-40 on many motorcycle rides several times before, and it never occurred to me to stop.   Folks, take it from me:   Don’t make that mistake.  Although not as well known as other flagship US National Parks (Zion, Bryce, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, etc.), the Petrified Forest is a real gem.

Another view of the Painted Desert. It really is this dramatic.
Yet another perspective on the Painted Desert. This is good stuff, folks.

There’s only one road that meanders through the Petrified Forest National Park, with numerous strategically-located viewing stops along its length.   We hit nearly every one.

One such stop was Newspaper Rock.  We thought it would be a rock formation that looked like a newspaper, but it wasn’t that at all.  It was a collection of petroglyphs deep in a canyon.  The newspaper moniker was related to the idea that early Native Americans communicated with and left messages for each other here.   Fortunately, I had my 70-300 lens, and that allowed the reach I needed to get good images…

Cool stuff. Very early Native American newsprint.
The people who created these petroglyphs lived here about a thousand years ago. They predate the Native American tribes we know of.

While we were admiring the petroglyphs, a couple of crows landed nearby.  By that time I had already put the wide angle lens back on the Nikon, and I wanted to see just how close I could get before the crows flew away.  The big black birds were cool until Sue and I were about 4 feet away, and then they took off.  They were huge.  We actually heard the wind they created flapping their wings.

An old crow in the Petrified Forest National Park. It was a big bird.

The scenery and the roads were stark and colorful.  We stopped and I grabbed this photo of Sue and the Subie…

Sue and the Subie. My Outback was perfect for this kind of road trip. Over a distance of 2705.6 miles, the Subaru averaged 28.3 mpg. That included stints in the mountains, dirt roads, city driving, and many 75mph+ freeway stints.

You might be wondering…what about the petrified trees?  Where were they?

Well, we saw those, too…

Petrified trees. They are really cool. You can’t take them out of the Park, but once you leave the Park, there are souvenir stores selling things like this.
More petrified logs. As I understand it, over the millenia the wood leaches out and is replaced by silica until, oila, a petrified tree remains. It’s pretty cool stuff and this was the first time I’d ever seen it.

This was a great destination.  We exited I-40 on the eastern edge of the Petrified Forest and followed the road through the Park all the way to the western edge.   From there, you pick up an Arizona country road and follow it west for roughly 20 miles to Holbrooke, where you can get back on I-40.  Good times and a great destination.  You might want to add it to your list of places to see.  It’s worth a trip to Arizona all by itself, and it’s certainly worth a stop if you are passing through Arizona on Interstate 40.