Today we got up and had breakfast, then Peter, Karen and I headed out for the day. We are going to do 3 things in the Chattanooga Tennessee area. First up is “Rock City” on Lookout Mountain.
We parked the car and purchased our tickets.
We started out on the Enchanted Trail which winds and snakes its way through large granite rock formations. The original discoverers of this place used to unroll balls of twine as they walked and explored so that they could find their way back to the beginning. Now there are plenty of signs to direct you.
Along the Grand Corridor.
Then we strolled through Gnome Valley. There are so many more photos, too many to put on this blog so be sure to look at todays photos on my FLICKR site. The link is at the bottom of the blog.
Passed by Mushroom Rock.
We walked across the Swing-A-Long Bridge.
From the Swing-A-Long Bridge it was a short stroll to Lovers Leap. This is the scenery we saw along the way.
Above us is Lover’s Leap.
Here we are at High Falls walking across the Sky Bridge. High Falls is 140 feet high.
Next along our walk is the 7 States over look at Lover’s Leap. From this vantage point and on a clear day,
you can see 7 States. Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama and Kentucky.
We continued along our walk and through the Fat Man Squeeze.
Then we stopped to help balance a 1000 Ton rock.
At the Observation Deck, we got a different perspective of High Falls, Lover’s Leap and the Sky Bridge.
We entered the gate to Fairy Land Caverns… I am not going to bore you with dozens of photos, but inside the caverns are vignettes of popular children’s stories. Go to our FLICKR site to see these photos.
After the Fairy Land Caverns is Mother Goose Village, more vignettes of popular nursery rhymes.
As we exited the Rock City Caverns, we saw a Starbucks and went in for a much needed break before heading to our next stop on our 3 stop tour.
The next stop is the “Lookout Mountain Incline Railway”. This is approximately a 1 mile long Cable Car Railway rising to the top of Lookout Mountain. At some points the grade is 72 degrees, making this the worlds steepest passenger railway.
After our visit to the Incline Railway, we headed for our last stop of the day. “Ruby Falls”. The claim to fame here is the 145 ft high waterfall that is inside a cave that is 1000 ft below the ground surface.. I have seen lots of waterfalls, but never one inside a cave. There are lots of photos from inside the cave, but in the interest of brevity, I will refer you to the FLICKR site to see those and bring you the main attraction without further delay.
Ruby Falls.
Ruby Falls.
So we are pretty much wore out.. just the walk from the entrance of the caves to the base of Ruby Falls was 1/2 a mile and then the walk back out. I would bet we walked a mile or two at Rock City. 3-4 miles of walking and up and down stairways is a good estimate.
Now like I said, there are photos, many more photos, about 300 photos, so this link will take you to our FLICKR site where you can see all that we saw today.
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