March 5th, 2007: Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The battle for 'the Gateway to the South' stretched all over the place around here, and there are several military parks to visit. We visited Chickamauga and Lookout Mountain (left), which overlooks the city, the Tennessee River, and the site of the main internment depot for the Indians on the Trail of Tears.

Only slightly less terrible than those 19th century events was our tour of Ruby Falls, the tallest underground waterfall. Our guide was excruciatingly hammy, and after we walked thru caverns with him for a 1/2 mile, he turned out the lights so that we could "experience the falls the way Leo Lambert [the spelunker who discovered them] first did." The lights fell and the theme from 2001 erupted, presumably just as it had for Leo.