The Great Elvis Expedition:

Day 3, Sunday, August 11^th, 2002 and Day 4, Monday, August 12^th, 2002 

Sunday morning dawned bright and clear, and we set out to drive from Roanoke, VA, to Asheville, NC along the Blue Ridge Parkway.  The Parkway itself was beautiful, but Wiley and Rick decided that it would take too long to get to Asheville, and that we should jump off the Parkway and get on a major road.  Wiley, the official navigator chose Rt. 194, a road with 245 z turns every mile that took us through country that Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone rejected as being too remote. Of course, we all gave Wiley what is called in technical terms a Raft of Shit, with Rick leading the chorus. Even the ever affable Ed joined in as he strained to maneuver the bus around the hairpin turns.  Only Rusty, sleeping with his head on Wiley’s foot, remained loyal. 

Finally, we arrived at our destination at the Grove Park Inn, which is a spa hotel literally made of and hewn out of rocks on a cliff overlooking Asheville, NC. It might have been constructed by dwarves in the time of Middle Earth. It is a huge hotel, with rooms the length of bowling alleys, offering its guests 5 different types of massages, herbal tea wraps, mud baths, etc.  We had a great meal on the outdoor terrace overlooking the valley and the town of Asheville.  

Monday morning dawned bright and clear.  The day’s mission was to drive to Chattanooga.  We left the stately but fundamentally weird Grove Park Inn at 8:30 A.M.  Fresh from our experience the day before, and determined to arrive early, we skipped the drive through the Smokey Mountain National Park and took the Interstate instead.  The drive through North Carolina and into Tennessee was still beautiful.  

On the recommendation of Ed and Rusty, we stopped for lunch at the Flying J truck stop and clothes emporium. All you can eat, $9.95 per person.  Rick, Ron, and Tom all got their money’s worth.  Wiley got four times his moneys worth.  We then proceeded to the Tennessee border, where we stopped for a while and sat on rocking chairs on the porch of a frontier house, while Rusty communed with nature, to be polite about it.  We then settled in for the final run, arriving in the Chattanooga area by 2:00.  We decided to make a quick 10 mile incursion into Georgia to visit the Chickamauga battlefield.   

On September 19^th, 1863, Union forces under General Rosecrans and Confederate forces under General Braxton Bragg clashed in one of the bloodiest battles of the war along West Chickamauga Creek.  Rosecrans was well beloved by his men and had a solid plan for the battle, but due to bad information from a scout inadvertently left a hole in his line. Braxton Bragg was hated by his men, his officers, his corps commanders, and his horse, and was pretty much an idiot.  However, as luck would have it, one of his corps commanders-Lt. General James Longstreet of Gettysburg fame, arrived at the battle just as the hole appeared in the Union lines.  As a result, the right flank of the Union army was turned and most of the Union Army fled back towards Chattanooga.  Only a heroic stand by Union Major General George H. Thomas on Snodgrass Hill kept the battle from becoming a rout.  

Braxton Bragg failed to explore this lucky victory by pursuing the Union army before it could regroup.  Civil War historians all agree that Elvis would not have made this mistake.  

After the Chickamauga battlefield, we then went to Chattanooga and checked in to our Marriott hotel.   Wiley and Tom then spent a few hours learning how to download digital pictures and sending them to Mayling.  Well, to be more accurate, Wiley learned (with help from Mayling in Camden) while Tom watched in stupefied amazement, which is my normal reaction to technology.  Meanwhile, at the urging of Rusty, Rick and Ron took a taxi to a Laundromat to wash four days worth of dirty clothes.  

Ron, Wiley, and I then finished the day by going to a ballgame to watch the Chattanooga Lookouts play some other AA team in a new ballpark. (which is not as nice as the Camden Riversharks, but still a pretty park.)  It was a beautiful summer night, we had great seats along the first base line, and we watched baseball being played the way it was meant to be played for the princely sum of $8 per person.  Meanwhile, major league players averaging $2.3 million per year in salary are debating whether to go on strike, get more money, and allow the rapacious owners to increase the average ticket price to $500.  Go figure.  

We walked ten blocks back and forth to the ballpark from our hotel, and it is clear that Chattanooga is a city that is trying very hard to revitalize itself.  There are at least six new hotels, a small convention center, a Children’s Museum, the very successful Tennessee Aquarium, and a new movie theater complex all within this ten block area.  A few new trendy and struggling upscale restaurants and bistros coexist with Dollar stores.  I think they are going to make it.  

So ended Day 4 of the Great Elvis Expedition.