Monday, April 13, 2009

Chattanooga - Rock City / Lookout Mountain

After the incline railway, we drove up the mountain to Rock City. It's quite a lovely drive and we enjoyed seeing all the adorable cottages on our way up. We arrived at Rock City, snapped some pics and headed in.


I should stop and let you know that my children that we took are 10 and 7 year old twins. They were starting to get a little testy at this point simply because we had already done Ruby Falls and the Incline Railway earlier in the day (you can tell this by the look on my daughter's face in the pic above). IF we had been staying in Chattanooga one more day, it would have been a good idea to do Rock City a different day. If my children had been younger and still requiring naps, I DEFINITELY would recommend busting all this up into two days.

We had bought the combo tickets for Ruby Falls, Incline Railway and Rock City. We were able to walk right in. You go through a gift shop to start this self guided tour, but no need to shop...you exit through it as well! Again, they snap your picture hoping you will BUY it when you leave although at Rock City, I never even saw where the pics were available. Oh, the devastation.

Rock City is really beautiful and I didn't realize that it was a privately owned garden. What a lucky woman to have such a wonderful husband to create such a magical place for her! The kids enjoyed all the sights, but were constantly wanting to hurry up and get to the next "thing" as they were bored. I would have enjoyed going at a slower pace as they have every type of plant labeled, etc. but the kids were antsy. They did enjoy the swinging bridge.


When we got to the lookout point, they definitely chilled out and really enjoyed spending some down time here. You were able to see seven different states, although I think the kids really thought you would see lines showing you exactly where the states were. You will need some quarters for the large magnifiers which they really enjoyed. This was also where I ran into a fellow blogging adoptive mom! Small world huh?


Behind the lookout point, they had a beautiful flower garden where I snapped this pic of my beautiful girl.

From there, we went into yet another gift shop where I bought J a shirt and a nice, cold lemonade. Then, it was time to head to the "fat man's squeeze" The kids thought it was funny that it was called this because they had no problem at all getting through there. Can't wait to go back with them when they are adults and remind them of this.

From there, we headed into fairyland or something like that. It is basically a manmade cave that features lots of Mother Goose fairy tales and gnomes. They LOVED this and really enjoyed counting all the gnomes they could spot.

We were definitely all tired by the time we left as there are lots of steps and lots of walking. We checked out the gift shop and left with three crying children because they were exhausted and wanted to buy something, anything, just to say we bought something. I don't think so. They literally fell asleep after being in the car 10 minutes so I know they were pooped.

We hopped onto interstate 24 and headed home. Overall, it was a WONDERFUL trip with very few things I would have done differently. I will warn you though...our two day jaunt to Chattanooga from Nashville literally cost over $1000 for the 6 of us and we didn't splurge on anything major. We joked on the way home that we could have gone to Disney!

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