Park Units 87 & 88: Fort Donelson National Battlefield and Meriwether Lewis/Natchez Trace Parkway

8/24/17. Our last day in Tennessee, we started at Donelson National Battlefield. This is a beautiful military park with a driving/audio tour and many stops. The visitor's center is lovely - a comfy place to take a break and learn more about this time period and the local area.

This park includes a lot of land that commemorates and explains the civil war battles in this area. There is a driving/audio tour with many different stops along the way.  The stops include a confederate monument:

Log Huts for soldiers quarters in the winter:

Confederate River Batteries:

The Dover Hotel (surrendor house)

There is much to see here and the land is rolling, wooded hills. Very beautiful, well designed park and memorial.












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Next we drove for 2 hours through winding narrow roads over beautiful hills, both wooded and farmed, with many streams and rivers, to get to the Meriwether Lewis Memorial and Natchez Trace Parkway. There is a small little cabin with a bookstore and exhibits about Lewis's adventures and strange death by suicide. Interesting original letters and other artifacts from his unusual life story.

There is also a monument to Lewis - it is a stone pillar that is cut off to demonstrate his shortened life. Very odd, but so is his story - which I learned a lot about at this park. Worth the quick stop!

We hope to be back in Tennessee one day soon to visit the many other parks!

Park Units 85 & 86: Mammoth Cave National Park and Abraham Lincoln Birthplace NHS

8/23/17. We started out early this morning so we would arrive on time for our 8:30 am Cave Tour at Mammoth Cave. It's always refreshing to visit a National Park since they seem to have more money and better services. This was no exception! People were lined up out the door to purchase tickets for tours, but we smugly picked up our tickets that we ordered online a month ago. (I was so glad!). 

We took the Niagra Tour with two of the rangers who led us into the cave through an easy entrance. We went through a few tight passageways and got to see some tiny bats on the ceiling as well as "cave crickets".
The formations were as impressive as we expected -- and different from the other caves we visited last year (especially Wind Cave). 





There were many areas of flowstone. According to the National Caves Association, Flowstones are composed of sheetlike deposits of calcite formed where water flows down the walls or along the floors of a cave. They are typically found in "solution caves", in limestone, where they are the most common speleothem. However, they may form in any type of cave where water enters that has picked up dissolved minerals. Flowstones are formed via the degassing of vadose percolation waters."

The highlight of this tour was the massive 30 foot flowstone formation that looked like a waterfall. We were able to take stairs down underneath this. 

The celings of the cave was so interesting! I'm not sure what any of these formations are called, but it was fascinating. 

The tour was just long enough for us to get our fill of being underground and seeing a slightly different kind of cave. The tour was excellent in providing information and giving us time to explore.

Next, we headed to

Abraham Lincoln's Birthplace National Historic Site. This is an unusual site in the middle of a very rural area. There is a large neo-classical monument build to honor Lincoln. The monument was built and commemorated in the 1920's. We enjoyed looking at the photographs of the presidents and guests who visited the site at the time. 

The monument is strange because it looks like it belongs in Washington, D.C., not rural Nebraska. It is also strange because there is a recreated log cabin inside of it. 

The visitor's center has a short film and exhibits showing what life would have been like when Lincoln was born in this area. The original spring that attracted the family to this land is still on the property.

This unit was interesting in many ways - the political culture of the 1920's that led to this memorial, the beautiful land, and the opportunity to imagine life in earlier times.

Park Units 83 & 84: Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area and Obed Wild and Scenic River

8/22/17. Today was our "river day"! We started out with a drive to the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area which is on the border of Tennessee and Kentucky. Needless to say, the area was lush, green, and beautiful. We really love trees so this was a little bit of heaven.

We found a trail that took us to a lookout over the river and we really enjoyed the forest walk (except when our imagination got the better of us and we imagined being kidnapped or worse on this remote trail with no other people in sight! We realized we had told no one where we were going today, so we quickly texted Jason with our plan).

This park is huge, so we drove up the northern section in Kentucky, called Blue Heron, where there used to be a coal mining company town.

There is now an outdoor museum with information about coal mining and life at the time. The bookstore and concessions were closed today and we were the only ones at the site. 

It was very hot and misty from a recent shower and it gave off an aura of a creepy, ghostlike past!

Park Unit 82: The Total Solar Eclipse at Stones River National Battleground

8/21/17. We flew in last night to Nashville for the opportunity to see the solar eclipse in the zone of totality.

The highways all read "No parking during eclipse"

This morning we stopped at Wal-Mart for chairs, umbrellas, and snacks, then drove to Stones River National Battlefield. As we reached the park, the rangers directed us to a special entrance for the event and they gave us glasses, brochures about the special events and the park unigrid.

Line to get into Stones River NB

We parked and found a shady spot to settle down and wait for the eclipse to start. There was already a big crowd by 9:30 and throughout the morning, more people arrived.

We toured the visitor's center and some of the grounds. The National Park Service had a special stamp made up for the occasion!

Partial eclipse 1

Partial eclipse 2

Almost full eclipse 3

Corona in full eclipse 4

Sun peeking out after full eclipse

The eclipse started at noon and it was fun to chat with other people while we checked the progress of the moon. At the full eclipse, the sky went dark, except for the horizon far off. People cheered and the stunning corona appeared. It didn't last as long as we had expected. When the corona finished and went back into partial eclipse, most people packed up and left. It was truly an amazing event and we were lucky that the large puffy clouds did not fully obstruct the totality. After the totality, we stayed for a while longer, and drove past the national cemetery on our way back to the Nashville area.

This park commemorates many of the Civil War battles in this area. They had good displays for children along with interactive elements. We're not fans of the war stories, but this park did an effective job of describing life during this period and how the war affected the area.