We’ve reached Chattanooga TN, we got here sometime during the night. The ship/boat/whatever will stay here tonight and we disembark tomorrow a.m., for today it is our floating hotel and shore excursions are happening.
We pax will leave the ship by 8:30 a.m. tomorrow and the crew then has about 4 hours to get ready for the next batch of pax to arrive. They’ll arrive ready to eat lunch and begin the return trip to Nashville.
We will take the ship’s shuttle to the airport to get a rental car and then drive the 120 miles to Walland, TN where our friends live. We’re there 4 nights and then fly home to NV.
It has been a pleasant trip through green and pleasant country. Most trees hereabouts are deciduous and, a month into autumn, no leaves have yet begun to turn. Compared to NV, the overwhelming “greenness” is soothing to the eyes.
Compared to WY the difference is that here south-facing slopes are green too, whereas there they tend to get dry and scruffy-looking over the normally dry summer. In the west you don’t need a compass to find north, the north sides of hills are green and wooded, the south sides are brush and grass covered.
Later … We took an excursion this afternoon and en route got a look at a fair swath of Chattanooga and vicinity. This is a good-looking town and in latish October the weather is still shirt-sleeve comfy.
What a westerner notices is the lush trees everywhere. The entire area is basically a forest and the only breaks are the rivers, roads, and wherever people have “cleared” the land. To folks who spend half the year in Nevada,, the contrast is dramatic.
