Signal Mountain & Tennessee River Gorge

Signal Mountain sits directly above Chattanooga on the north rim of the Tennessee River Gorge — a high residential plateau 1,600 feet above the city with the best elevated views of the Moccasin Bend meander and the river gorge below. The Tennessee River Gorge Trust's Pot Point Nature Center at the bottom of the gorge gives the reverse perspective: a river-level view of the 1,000-foot sandstone walls and the wild gorge interior that is almost invisible from the city above. Day one is Signal Mountain's scenic overlooks and the Nickajack Cave Wildlife Refuge 30 miles west, where 150,000 gray bats exit a river-mouth cave at dusk in one of the most unusual wildlife spectacles in the mid-South. Day two descends into the gorge itself for a flat trail walk and a morning on the Tennessee River before the return.