Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Today was packed with activities. We started the day out with a trip to Ruby Falls in Chatanooga. It's a tour of underground caverns.
The waterfall is completely underground. This is the climax of the tour.
It is beautiful to be sure. I kind of wish they didn't use the colored lights to light it up. I would like to see the rocks and waterfall in their own beauty. It's really funny though, because on the way to the falls the tour guide tells about how it was discovered and points out different areas of interest and all the things you expect. When you get to the waterfall, it's completely dark and they turn on the lights for a set length of time and then it gets dark again and that's when it's time to leave. On the way out of the caverns, the tour guide didn't say a word. It's like they're done with you at the waterfall and you're on your own after that. It was just weird.
Anyway, as you would expect, the tour dumps you out into the gift shop. I had to get these two out of there.
(He's sexy, no?)
Once we left there we walked up to the top of Look Out Mountain where you could see all of Chatanooga. It was pretty nice.
Then we jumped back in the car and continued up the mountain a little more where we rode on an incline train. We started at the top of the mountain and it takes you down the side of the mountain into a little town. We looked around a bit in town and then rode the train back up. I don't like to be high places and this ride made me nervous to say the least. I did fine on the ride down but the ride back up was awful for me. Especially at the top where it feels like you're just hanging there and they keep talking. I just wanted off!! Anyway, I think Dax and the kids enjoyed it.
While we were in town from the train ride we saw a little pizza and ice cream place and we decided we'd have lunch there. When we got there the place was packed with kids from some local camp so we had plenty of time to sit and relax while we waited for our pizza.
After we finished our pizza and ice cream we headed for the National Medal of Honor Museum. As luck would have it, the directions on my phones map app took us right into the ghetto and a vacant lot where the museum should have been. Nice! We drove around for 30 minutes at least even trying to get there!! I called the place and got a better idea of where they were and found that we had to go back to almost where we had started. Sheesh!!
The museum is in a mall which is kind of weird, but we did find it and it's a nice place with lots of information about the recipients that are featured in there. And the volunteer working at the time was very knowledgeable too.
Once we left the museum we headed onto Gatlinburg, TN, which was our scheduled stop for the night. Our hotel is right on the river and the rooms have a balcony where we could sit to enjoy the view.
When we first arrived, the kids and I were standing on the balcony looking around and saw a beaver walking around in the yard across the river from us. It was kind of neat to see.
It would have been nice to just sit on the balcony above the river, but instead we walked into town to see what was going on. We did a couple of things like a 5D movie ride call The Earthquake. It was okay but still a little cheesy. After that we went to one where you sit on a mechanical horse during the movie and shoot at the bad guys on the screen. And you're actually competing with everyone else in the theatre. It was fun. We looked around some more and decided it was finally time to eat dinner. We decided on
Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. The food was good and our waitress was very nice.
After dinner we went to another 5D movie by Ripley's that was really good. It was a lot of fun. Then we decided to call it a night since it was getting late and we were all tired. Although, the mile walk back to our hotel after we were all so tired seemed so much farther than it did when we were walking into town.
