Lost Sea Adventure & Chattanooga highlights - Friday, February 25, 2011

5:30 a.m. was a long time ago. It is now 10:50 p.m. We spent some time in Chattanooga and need to go back for another day or two. Both of us agreed we loved Chattanooga.

To fill in the time gap, here's what we did today...

1. Drove through Great Smoky Mountain's southwestern area (Cade's Cove Rd) to exit the park.  Near the Sugarlands Visitor Center, we saw a flock of about 13 wild turkeys. While driving, I had to dodge small branches, sticks, pieces of branches, rocks and even a tree as a result of the high winds experienced in the area overnight. We pulled into a roadside lot to let someone who wanted to go fast pass us. In the lot, a park ranger driving a pickup with a plow on the front of it (who had come from the other direction) asked us if any trees were down on the road from the direction we had come. We told him that there was a small tree blocking half the road. He headed out to move it. On the road he had already cleared, we didn't have any problems.

2. The Lost Sea Adventure, Sweetwater, TN. This is a unique tour. We hiked down into a cave, passing interesting cave formations along the way. Our destination? A 4-1/2 acre underground lake which is 30' deep. And what did we do there, you might wonder? We took a glass-bottom boat ride around the lake. The owners of the cave stocked the lake with trout a number of years back as an experiment to see if there was another exit to the cave. Apparently there isn't as the trout didn't leave. They feed the trout on their tours and keep lights on 12 hours a day so the trout don't go blind and don't lose all their pigment. No fishing is allowed in the lake.

We are on Tennesee's Civil War Trails.

 

Screams "tourist trap," doesn't it? Still interesting.

If you're really adventurous and want to explore other parts of the cave, you can pay extra, don overalls, helmets, headlamps and boots and really go for the spelunking thing. Not my thing.

Motorized boats take us out on the underground lake.

Here's the trout.

After the Lost Sea Adventure, we ate lunch as we drove to Chattanooga--tuna sandwiches (we had prepared in our room before we left), sliced green peppers and cookies.

3. Ruby Falls, Lookout Mountain, TN. What a day for attractions! To get to Ruby Falls, we took a tour that descended 260' in an elevator to a natural cave. On the cave tour, we saw all the usual formations--cave bacon, columns, stalactites, stalagmites, draperies, flowstone, etc. 

The one thing that made this cave so special to us is the 145' waterfall that is 1,120' down in the earth. Not only that, but the cavern the waterfall is in is lighted so it looks surreal, but beautiful.

Lighted cavern...light changes color.

Ruby Falls.

Yep, definitely water droplets in here!

Ruby Falls Cavern has gone green. That's right, this cave is solar powered. 

Here's the bank of solar panels, hard at work.

4. Lookout Mountain Incline Railway (funicular). At a gradient of 72.7 percent, this is one of the steepest railways in the world. There are two cars that counterbalance each other...as one goes down, the other goes up. Each is pulled or lowered by a large cable. The view from the railway is spectacular. The overall experience, though unique, proved to be a little slow-paced for us.

Inside the railway car.

Looking out the front window on the way down.

The view out the "roof" of the car from our seat.

Looking out the back window at the steep tracks.

Here's the funicular.

Up at the top, we had spectacular views of Chattanooga and the surrounding countryside.

Chattanooga, Tennessee

More Chattanooga, Tennessee.

5. Rock City Gardens. To me, this place was awesome. It's a garden that was created around large rocks. Pathways meander and wind up, over, under and through the rocks. Music plays softly as you explore the delightful, peaceful, and sometimes playful gardens. There's a swinging bridge, rock bridge, seven-states overlook, High Falls, Lover's Leap, Rainbow Hall, Fairyland with Mother Goose Village, enclosed spaces and wide-open vistas. This was a great way to end the day.

Swing-A-Long Suspension Bridge

I like suspension bridges!

Click on photo to read.

The original owner's home is on the property and still a private residence.

Bald eagle sculpture.

Bob at High Falls overlook.

 Whimsical to boot.

Gettin' my goblin on.

 Fairyland Caverns had beautiful black-light dioramas of many Mother Goose and other fairy tales.

Hansel and Gretel.

Cinderella.

The Three Little Kittens.

I want one!

For dinner, we headed to downtown Chattanooga and decided on the Big River Grill on Broad Street. Hands down, this was the best meal on our trip to date. I had Hazelnut Crusted Chicken with Dried Cherry Gravy, white cheddar mashed potatoes and green beans. My chicken was exquisitely prepared. The dried cherry gravy complemented the hazelnut chicken and the mashed potatoes. YUM! The food just melted in my mouth. I gave Bob half of it and he loved it too. Bob ordered chicken nachos with black beans and tri-colored chips. The nachos were excellent as well, but the hazelnut chicken won best food of the trip.

That's all for today. Are you tired of reading yet? I know I'm tired.

The Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee - Thursday, Februrary 24, 2011

Today, the weather acted a lot more like February. The rain came. Rain on vacation means museums. Off we went to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to visit the American Museum of Science and Energy.

Oak Ridge used to be called "The Secret City." People who worked there didn't know what their job was for, only how to do it. They worked on The Manhattan Project and were instrumental in producing the first atomic bomb and the invention of the nuclear reactor. "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, thus bringing the isolationist U.S. into WW II. We emerged from the museum four hours after we went in.

Time for lunch, so we went to The Soup Kitchen for homemade soup, sandwiches and salad.

Because it was around 2:30 pm, and because we learned so much in the museum, we decided to skip the 38-mile driving tour of Oak Ridge.

For the next leg of our rainy-day trip, we drove to Cumberland Gap National Historical Park at the Tennessee / Kentucky / Virginia border. It was a long drive from Oak Ridge. We arrived about 4:10 pm... visitor center closed at 5:00 pm. 

Cumberland Gap, and its Wilderness Road, was the primary route through the Appalachian Mountains back in the day. We had time to look at exhibits about the Cherokee Indians, Daniel Boone and then the Civil War (although no big battles took place at Cumberland Gap). We watched the visitor center movie, then headed up to Pinnacle Overlook. 

No view from the overlook as it was completely fogged in.  

We did, however, happen upon four deer, looking quite ghostly in the mist. I handed Bob the camera, he stuck it out the window and quickly snapped this photo. Brilliant!

Since we were here, we hiked a short trail to read a history marker and get a feel for the area.

Next, we drove through the tunnel to the visitor center on the other side which was closed, but we looked at the displays and sculptures outside and walked to the waterfall coming down the gully behind the visitor center.

The following sign was lying down in the dead leaves. It looked perfectly in place where it lay.
 

Boone Trail Wilderness Road.

A little farther down the road we got out and hiked to an old Iron Furnace and tried to see the waterfall coming down behind it. The water was overflowing its banks. I didn't see a need to try to cross a raging stream to try to get a better picture of a waterfall...gave up on that picture and took a photo of the raging stream instead.

It it hadn't been almost dark, we would have hiked this trail to the Three States Cornerstone. Guess we'll save it for the next trip.

 

Raging creek.

It was almost dark. We headed back to Gatlinburg, about 1-1/2 hours away. On the way back we stopped in Pigeon Forge at "Huck Finn's" for dinner. Bob had catfish and I had trout. We are in the south now. Our dinner came with all the "vittles" we could eat, and our waiter's name was Gordo. Vittles are "sides." Our vittles were hush puppies, white beans with turkey ham, coleslaw, and dill pickles served on a plate with sliced onions.

At night back in our room, the news and the weather channel predicted tornadoes in central Tennessee by Nashville. Thunder and high winds were predicted in Gatlinburg. Luckily, we did not have tornadoes!

We fell asleep listening to the wind in the trees outside our  unit.