One end of Cravens House with a leafless tree against background clouds–can you spot Pat and Tisen?

After our little adventure at the Nature Center (yesterday’s post), we drove up Lookout Mountain a couple of miles to Cravens House, part of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park.

Cravens House is not spectacular from an architectural perspective, but the history of the place, the view, and the fact that it’s a trailhead for many great trails more than make up for the lack of creative design.

We thought it would be a good destination to walk around with Tisen for a half hour or so, expecting to walk through the woods until we tired and then turn around and come back.  We were not dressed for serious hiking.  I had on my typical casual outfit, including a winter coat perfect for going to a casual dinner.  The exception was my hiking boots and rolled up jeans–just in case there was mud.  Pat also was dressed in his casual gear meaning a T-shirt, sweatshirt, and corduroy jacket that isn’t exactly warm.

This is only one of many monuments commemorating units who fought in the civil war, many of them from the Union

When we got out of the car, the wind blasted us, immediately making it feel 15 degrees colder than lower down the mountain.  Snow flurries started falling from the gray, gray sky.  Tisen gave us a look when he hopped out of the van that seemed to say, “Really?  We drove all the way up here for this?”

We made our way across the wind-blasted lawn, the only ones out and about at this elevation.  We made a circular lap past Cravens House, then past the giant monument in the lawn and over to an odd looking half-modern, half-historical log cabin.  We paused behind the cabin, seeking shelter from the wind while Tisen sniffed.

The more historic looking end of the log cabin

Tisen has a funny habit.  Well, he has many funny habits.  One of them is quite funny to watch, but has been very challenging to catch on camera.  He backs up to a bush, hunches up his back like he needs to heed the call of nature, and then sways his rear end back and forth under the tree branches, giving himself a good scratch.  He decided the shrubs behind the cabin represented the perfect opportunity for a good scratch.

A little more of Cravens House with a more visible Pat and Tisen

This was about the time a car pulled into the parking lot and a man and a dog got out of it.  They’d come for a game of fetch.  The man was even less prepared for the cold than we were–he had no jacket at all.

The man didn’t see us until his dog came running over.  He apologized profusely, but the dogs greeted each other with proper dog etiquette and hit it off.  We asked if it was OK to let Tisen off his leash and soon, the dogs were chasing each other around the yard.  It made me sad that we don’t have a yard for Tisen to run around in.  He got the most exercise of all of us and completely stopped noticing the cold.

A less happy Tisen won’t hold still for a picture when we took him for a post-romp bath