“Pardon Me Al, is that the Chattanooga Choo Choo”
Or, “ Pardon me pal, is that the cat that chewed your new shoes”
Depends on the version you know.
Once again, guess where we are??
After a fitful nights sleep at the rest area, coz of the trucks going past at inconsiderate hours, we left this morning, turned west, since that was the way the freeway went, and descended a five mile mountain, turned round, and came back up the same mountain!
We got to Chattanooga an hour later than anticipated, because there was a time zone change, and we are now in central Atlantic Bermuda time, or something eastern.
We parked the coach at a brand new Wal Mart, right by exit 174 on Interstate 24, for those of you following on Google Earth.
Lookout Mountain pretty much contains all there is to do in Chattanooga, so to Lookout Mountain we went.
Half way up is the turn off to Ruby Falls.
This place was discovered in19 something. There was a known cave system in the mountain, which had to be blocked off when it was decided to run a railroad tunnel through part of the mountain. A local man, by the name of I can’t remember, thought it would be a good idea to excavate an elevator shaft from the top of the mountain down to the cave system, and open it up for the public. The distance needed to drill down was about 450 ft, but when they got 260 feet down, there was a rush of cold air and a new cavern system was discovered. The man whose name we cant remember, henceforth known as Mr. TM, ( That Man) crawled into a hole 2 ft by 4 ft, disappeared for 17 hours, and then reappeared screaming or shouting “we’ve won the lottery”, or something like that. It took another couple of years or so, and finally Ruby Falls was open to the public.
It is named after the wife of Mr. TM.
After descending the 260 ft in the elevator, you walk for “two fifths” of a mile, in very narrow, low ceilinged paths, basically in the limestone rock fault lines, and finally come to the falls.
They are quite spectacular.
A vast cavern opens up, and water falls from185 ft above into a pool, 5 ft deep. There are multi colored lights, and “dramatic” music piped in from above, and all around, but the effect is very good.
If you suffer from severe claustrophobia, don’t visit. Your valiant captain nearly succumbed to the dreaded enclosed feeling, but managed to hold on for Marlipop’s sake.
Afterwards, we exited, through a gift shop.
We then drove further up the mountain to Rock City.
We thought that Lookout Mountain only had these two places on it, but it is a very busy place, lots of private drives and houses, stores, post office and gas station. Very normal, but just high up.
Rock City is a place discovered by another Mr. TM, back in the mists of time. He wandered in one day, saw lots of big rocks all higgledy piggledy, and decided this would be a good place to make some money, so he called it Rock City, built a few bridges and walking paths, put a fence around it and started charging exorbitant amounts of cash for people to look at……………rocks.
However, there is a wonderful part called, with great originality, “Lovers Leap’, which has a really good panoramic view over seven states.
The truth is stretched a bit here, coz they reckon that Virginia is visible, 120 miles away. The basic laws of visual physics come into play here, and together with the curvature of the earth, the haze, and where the sun is, all make this a bit too much to believe.
Anyway, still a great view.
We then came down the mountain, and wandered into the downtown area, where we visited the “Chattanooga Choo Choo”, a real old time steam train, with it’s attached carriages.
Next door was the model train museum. HO gauge railway modeling at its best. We spent over an hour marveling at the skill and ingenuity of the people who put this display together.
The room was about 300 feet long, and the display was the full length, and at least 30 feet wide. There were literally hundreds of different individual scenes, and at any one time there were a minimum of seven trains running around the various tracks and circuits. Excellent.
Then back to Wal Mart and the coach, only to find we were surrounded by vehicles!
No way out! Gridlock!
There was a Tabernacle Festival going on right beside the coach, with tents and live music and tables full of grills and hot dogs and burgers and millions of kids running round. So, we sat in the coach, and decided to stay where we were for the night! That was a decision we did not have to take long over!!
So here we are, and off to all points east in the morrow.
(Karen, we are getting closer)
Wildlife watch today was some bored looking white deer in Rock City, and a Praying Mantis.
