In Their Easter Bonnets

March 31, 2024 – Day 16

Chester Frost Park, Hixson TN

Today was Easter Sunday, the Roman Catholic flavor, not Orthodox Greek one. For the second year in a row we found ourselves on the road at Easter. Susan had plans for a roast pork loin, or ham, or something traditional. Paul tried to dissuade her since doing something like that in the RV seemed difficult to him even if it was just for two people. (susan here: It’s easy but don’t tell Paul!) So, what did we do? We went to the Chattanooga Aquarium! We’d bought the tickets earlier in the week on the way back from seeing something else. Susan tried for upwards of a half hour to buy them online but it was NOT working. She had been to the aquarium back in 2003. It was big then. They’ve added another building next to the original one, plus an IMAX theater. There are other things around the corner like a learning center for kids. We aren’t sure it’s associated with the aquarium but it is aquarium themed. Lots of restaurants too. The Aquarium revitalized the area. For a block around it seems to be connected to the aquarium in one way or another.

That’s the new building behind us. You ride a long escalator to the top and walk through these stone walls into the River Otter habitat.

They were hard to see and were mostly hanging out by the door. We assumed that feeding time was soon. But one came out for a minute or two. They are much larger than we thought they would be.

You exit that exhibit and go into the Aquarium proper where we saw an extensive exhibit of “native” fishes. Most fish in the pet hobby are from tropical areas. Paul had an interest in North American native fishes awhile back and read up a lot on them. We spent a lot of time in that room reading all the signs. Remember how we said the train museum had too many words? This one could have used a lot more (and then some more!) but that’s because we are fish geeks.

These are Rainbow Shiners (Notropis chrosomus). That image is not altered, they were that red. And blue and sparkly too when the light hit them just right. We were fortunate to be at the aquarium in the height of their breeding season. They are far less colorful outside of breeding times. Color changes are quite common in fish. Paul used to keep Dwarf Neon Rainbowfish. Every afternoon the boys would “flip the switch” and wow they would glow with red, blue and purple!

Next up was the swamp room. That meant alligators and turtles.

Here you can see Susan standing in front of what is about a third of the swamp exhibit. BTW, Susan loves turtles. (susan here: yes! I do!)

What’s in this next photo?

Frogs! They looked like lichen unless they moved. Then they looked like moving lichen. :- )

We left that section and went into the “big tanks section”. Susan said hello to a Paddlefish that sports an elongated rostrum (susan here: aka nose and wow is it big!). It’s thought that it enhances electroreception to detect prey. They are “filter feeders,” opening their mouth wide and sucking in water, which hopefully contains zooplankton etc.

Did we mention they’re big tanks? They’re really big in width but they’re also several stories tall. The set up is pretty clever. The tanks are set up so that you naturally move along the series of ramps. The cool bit is that you’re the “inside part” essentially surrounded by fish instead of being in a corridor like a lot of aquariums do.

There were so many of them it’s hard to capture the size of the place. Some of the fish exceeded 10 feet long.

We had a big, late breakfast before heading out. We were between buildings and considered our options. Go into the other building? Grab a snack somewhere? Eat the powerbars we brought?. It was a quarter to 2 and we were starving! We set out to find heartier fare than a powerbar or a snack. The cashier in the gift shop told us about a group of food trucks parked across the way.

That looked like fun so we headed over. We were shocked at how the prices were. One place offered Chicago Dogs (a style of hot dog we like) but they were $12! Add in a drink and tax and we’re probably talking $30-$35 for a food truck lunch of two hot dogs and two drinks. There were other trucks but they looked equally expensive.

Looking around we noticed a fun looking restaurant at the edge of the field. We figured if we were going to overpay for food we’d get great food. And have a table to sit at. They had a wonderful collection of funky art inside.

The food was amazing. Paul had a fancy hot dog, which was only $9 plus a side of fried mac and cheese balls with jalapeño maple syrup dipping sauce (don’t diss it until you’ve tried it). Susan had some awesome tacos. It was only a little more expensive but wow was it good. We’d both go back there if we found ourselves in Chattanooga again.

After lunch we walked—more like waddled—over to the 2nd building. We asked about the IMAX movie and were told that the one we wanted to see was starting in a few minutes. It was a brisk walk to the IMAX across the way and we arrived (barely) on time. The subject was on Blue Whales. It was a very good feature. Then back across the courtyard, this time in a more leisurely pace, to the new building. (susan here: we were really working off lunch with all that back and forth and back!) We were in for a treat. The top floor has the Lemur exhibit. Yeah, lemurs in an aquarium? River Otters make sense but lemurs? We both enjoyed them though. Paul’s cynical guess is that they have them because they are cute, and cute brings in visitors who might not be as gaga as we are about fishes, but visitors bring in money (susan here: aquariums are always scrambling for funds). Oh, Susan got a T-shirt with a cute Lemur on it.

There were two species of Lemurs there. The one people think of when they think Lemur, the Ringtail Lemur, was in one exhibit. The other was a fluffy brown species. No pictures of them but wow they were entertaining. One of the brown ones was having the zoomies and letting out that famous Lemur howls.

Next was onto a fairly small butterfly garden. The one in Philadelphia is much much better. But still, it is always fun to watch them.

Penguins were next.

We then went into the salt water section. By this time we were getting exhibit fatigue, even for us fish geeks. (susan here: it was a lot to take in.)

Hey Alan, check out this display tank!

Hey Barb, jellyfish!

All throughout the exhibits, in fact it was aquarium wide, there were little tunnels to crawl into and get “inside” the tank. The kids loved them. (susan here: when I was here last they had a big tank with leafy sea dragons and you could climb up inside. It was fun!)

We had hoped to go see a Grateful Dead Bluegrass cover band that night at a dinner theater, but we were both tired and plus we were way too full from that great late lunch to even consider doing that. We didn’t have dinner, just some snacked a bit. (We think but we can’t remember for sure since we’re writing this on the April 7th.)

Now it was decision time. This is the 7 day cloud cover forecast with a hand drawn approximate eclipse path.

Being just east of Dallas looks like a bad idea. We looked around for campsites but of course everything was booked solid. Some places were reserving sites and rooms as far back as seven years ago. And here we were looking for a place for the next day. Paul found a campground in Makanada, IL which had 25 walk-in sites. A walk-in site cannot be reserved and are only available on a first come first serve basis. We would need to make some decisions soon.