Junie's Online Thoughts
Sunday, August 14, 2005
This weekend we went to Chattanooga. I've never actually stopped there before...just passed through on the way to Atlanta, Minnesota or Nashville. We spent a rushed Saturday morning looking up hotels and sights and kept seeing warnings of the downtown. I called Randall, who gave us a few tips, and off we went.
Chattanooga is great! The city completed a huge multimillion dollar riverfront reconstruction project earlier this year. Right off the river are the aquarium, two museums and a compact, clean downtown (complete with free electric shuttle buses!) We haggled into a cheaper fare at one of the downtown Days Inns, then walked up Broad Street to the aquarium. After waiting in the crowded line and paying the $18 each, I had my doubts. But thankfully, the aqarium was fabulous. There we enjoyed huge tanks of pretty fish, both a jellyfish and sea horse/sea dragon exhibit (which are some of the coolest creatures I've ever seen) and the usual sting ray/sturgeons/octopus tanks. We spent over four hours there and loved every minute of it.
Downtown has plenty of restaurants and touristy places, but very little in terms of bars and clubs. After 10 pm, we walked downtown to scout out some fun. There were three dance clubs and a couple bars, all crowded with groups of young party girls or couples wearing cutoffs and t-shirts. I made a poor shoe choice, so wasnt up to dancing or staying out too late. We had a few drinks, then made our way back to the hotel to watch cable. We're such party animals!!
This morning we had breakfast at the diner attached to the hotel (I also bought a piece of six layer chocolate blackout cake for later...whoo god, that cake was sweet!) Then we drove to Ruby Falls. Back in the 1920's, this guy purchased a chunk of Lookout Mountain and wanted to drill an elevator shaft into the rock to access a closed off section of tunnels. While drilling, they found another tunnel and a series of caves leading up to a huge 100+ foot waterfall within the caves. It became Ruby Falls, Chattanooga's popular tourist destination. Despite its $13 pricetag, and the hordes of chatty, innane families, the tour was excellent. Nature is so cool! The stalagmites and stalagtites rocked, the mineral deposits formed all sorts of shapes--from wicked points to sensual labia-esque folds. All along they had goofy signs like, "Look here for a rooster on a surfboard" or "This formation looks like a piece of bacon and a Texas size potato chip." (Which it did, but nothing cheapens rock formations like a canned tape recording replayed hundreds of times.) The tour reaches the half-way mark, the spectacular falls, before retracing our steps through the caves and back up the elevator.
Then we drove up the mountain to Rock City, an even touristy spot. All in all it wasn't that bad...paths that lead through more rock formations, huge overlooks where you can see seven states at once, over 400 native plant species and a fairytale cave (plaster dioramas of fairy tale stories and gnomes). But by then we were hot and sick of all the people so we burned out pretty fast.
We drove back into Chattanooga, ate a quick lunch, drove once more around the streets, then came home. If we had more time and money, there was so much more that we could have done. We didn't ride the Incline Railroad, which is the world's only uphill railroad (or something like that), or visit the Chattanooga Choo Choo, or any of the museums, including a beautiful, modern museum of art by the riverfront.
Its sad that we discover a place that my family would have LOVED to have seen, if only I'd known about it myself. I wish we had gone to Chattanooga instead of Helen when they visited me a few years back. It would have pleased everyone. Oh well...at least we had the chance to explore the city before we leave town. Maybe we'll even make a trip back. Since we don't take many vacations, we do stupid shit like forgetting the camera (What is wrong with us???), so we didn't get a single photo of any of the cool shit we saw this weekend. What better reason to go back and see it again?
