Road Trip: Day 3 (Mud Island River Park, Nashville & Chattanooga)

We packed up the car and took the kids to Mud Island River Park right on the Mississippi River. It's a neat park that has a to-scale replica of the entire Mississippi River. The kids got to wade in the replica while we walked the entire length.

At the Memphis/Mud Island River Park portion of the map.

At Lake Pontchartrain

The bridge crossing the Mississippi River from Arkansas to Louisiana.

We stopped at the Loveless Cafe outside of Nashville on the recommendation of one of my friends.

We also went by the Tennessee state capitol on our way through Nashville.

On our way to Chattanooga, we noticed a long mountain range in the distance. As we got closer and closer, we realized we were going to go up and over the range. When we reached the top, we saw that they had a mandatory truck stop because the descent was a 6% grade over several miles. In fact, there were a couple of "runaway truck" ramps on the way down in case the semi's brakes gave out. Come to find out, we were in Monteagle on the Cumberland Plateau in an area that some consider one of the more hazardous stretches of Interstate highway. Another interesting fact about this area is that there's more than a mile separating the eastbound and westbound lanes, making it one of the widest medians of any Interstate highway.

See more pictures here.