Staying cool in eastern Tennessee
Eastern Tennessee “offers two sure cures for cooling the body and clearing the mind: waterfalls and caves,” said Robin Soslow in The Washington Post. The state’s swath of the Cumberland Plateau is rich in both, and a friend and I chose Lost Creek Cave, just east of Nashville, for a day of spelunking. Headlamps lit our way, and inside I felt the refreshing spray of a 60-foot waterfall. We found an “ancient room of rock” and clicked off our lights for a moment of sensory deprivation that felt like “a perfect antidote to traffic, babble, ringtones.” The next day, another friend and I hiked Fall Creek Falls State Park, about 25,000 acres of great spots, including creeks, swimming holes, and the namesake 256-foot falls. We crossed a swinging footbridge while enjoying views of ospreys and red-tailed hawks, then passed through one of the world’s largest hemlock stands. At Cane Creek Falls, we “slipped into the 60-foot-deep pool for baptism by the 85-foot plunge.”
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