Weekend Trip From Nashville to Waterfalls, a Bat Cave and Cast Iron

The Nashville weekend-trip list has not changed in a decade. Franklin. Leiper’s Fork. Bell Buckle. All good, all an hour away, all doing a brisk trade in antiques and biscuits. If you stay on I-24 for another forty-five minutes past Monteagle, the trip turns from a shopping street into waterfalls, a lake and a cave full of bats.

Marion County sits in the southeast corner of Tennessee where the Cumberland Plateau falls into the Tennessee River Gorge. It is about an hour and forty-five minutes to two hours from downtown Nashville, and it is about twenty minutes from Chattanooga if you want a city night. Here is how to spend a weekend in it.

Quick facts

• Drive from Nashville: About 1 hour 45 minutes to 2 hours, straight down I-24 southeast
• Base yourself in: Jasper, Kimball or South Pittsburg. Everything is inside 25 minutes.
• Best months: June to September for swimming and bats. October for color, festivals and ghost tours.
• Book ahead for: Sunset kayak tours, Hales Bar ghost tours (especially October), and any weekend near the Cornbread Festival in late April
• Bring: Hiking shoes, a swimsuit, bug spray and a dry bag

Friday: drive down, eat, and go see the bats

Leave Nashville after lunch. You will be in Marion County by mid-afternoon, and Friday evening has the best-timed attraction in the county.

Check in first, then eat early. Small-town kitchens close early and you are going to be out past dark. The restaurant list breaks the county down town by town.

Then get to Nickajack Cave before sunset. From roughly late March through early October, tens of thousands of endangered gray bats pour out of the flooded cave mouth at dusk and fan out over the lake to hunt. There is a free public viewing area, and outfitters run guided sunset kayak tours that put you on the water directly in front of the entrance. Arrive thirty minutes before sunset. It takes about an hour.

Read the Nickajack bat cave guide

Saturday morning: Foster Falls

Get to Foster Falls early, before ten on a summer weekend if you want parking.

Sixty feet of water drops off the plateau rim into a wide plunge pool at the bottom of a gorge. The hike down is only about half a mile, but it is steep and rocky, so wear shoes with grip and leave the sandals in the car. In summer the pool is deep enough to swim in, and the loop crosses the creek on a suspension bridge that will be the kids’ favorite part of the weekend.

If you want more trail, Foster Falls is the southern end of the Fiery Gizzard Trail, one of the most acclaimed and most physically demanding hikes in Tennessee. A two-mile out-and-back gives you a real sense of it without committing to the full twelve.

Read the Foster Falls swimming guide

Saturday afternoon: South Pittsburg and the cast iron

Dry off and drive to South Pittsburg, a river town of about three thousand people that happens to be the reason your grandmother’s skillet exists.

Lodge has been pouring cast iron here since 1896. The Lodge Museum of Cast Iron covers the foundry’s history alongside a flagship store, and the original factory store, selling seconds since 1994, is right there as well. An hour in the museum plus an hour to shop and eat is about right.

If you are here in late April, the whole thing escalates. The National Cornbread Festival shuts down downtown for a cook-off, a carnival and tens of thousands of visitors. Book lodging months out for that weekend.

Read the Lodge cast iron guide

Saturday night: the haunted dam

In Guild, at Hales Bar Marina, the powerhouse of Hales Bar Dam has been sitting on the Tennessee River since 1913. The dam leaked from the day it opened, defeated sixty years of engineering, and was finally breached by TVA in 1968.

Between the deaths during its construction and the legend that Cherokee war chief Dragging Canoe cursed the land, paranormal investigators and TV crews have been coming here for years. The resort runs ghost tours, overnight investigations, and a distillery-and-history tunnel tour for people who want the building without the séance. October books out early.

Read the Hales Bar Dam guide

Sunday: something quieter before you drive home

Pick one, then point the car north.

The Children’s Holocaust Memorial, Whitwell

Students at Whitwell Middle School set out to understand the number six million by collecting one paper clip for each life lost in the Holocaust. The clips came in from around the world, and the collection now sits in an authentic German rail car on the school grounds. It became the documentary Paper Clips. Give it more time than you think you need.

See visitor information for the Children’s Holocaust Memorial

A morning on Nickajack Lake

Nickajack Lake has public ramps, marinas, good bass and crappie water, and the Tennessee River Gorge as scenery. Sunday mornings out here are extremely quiet.

The Sequatchie Valley drive

Take TN-28 up the valley instead of getting straight back on the interstate. It is a long straight trench of farmland between two plateaus, with the escarpment on both sides the whole way.

Staying in Marion County or Chattanooga

Chattanooga is about twenty minutes east, and plenty of people stay there. But downtown rates run higher, everything on this itinerary is west of the city, and the reason to come this far south is the plateau and the gorge. Staying in Marion County puts you inside a twenty-five minute triangle of every stop above, with Chattanooga close enough for a dinner run.

• Hotels off I-24 at Kimball: Holiday Inn Express, Clarion Pointe Kimball and Red Roof Inn Kimball, with the rest on the hotels page.
• Cabins on the lake: see vacation rentals.
• Camping: Foster Falls Campground and the rest are on Camping & RVs.

Book the room, then book the sunset kayak tour. Those go first.