The Unexpected Day

March 29, 2024 – Day 14

Chester Frost Park, Hixson TN

After yesterday’s day of walking and touristy things we wanted to take it easy. This was for a few reasons. The first that yesterday was a lot. Visually it was a lot to take in and it was a lot a fair bit of walking. Today’s plan was Ruby Falls and Raccoon Mountain Caverns. An ambitious goal. Possibly a lofty goal (susan here: well, okay an impossible goal. But goals are good things to have, right?) Through My Lens YouTube’s Josh said that Ruby Falls was worth it, but warned that it could be a strenuous 5 miles and 1,500 foot elevation gain hike (susan here: with a nod to my cousin Donna, this was not a Florida hike. This was a bonafide hike.) That’s not something either of us were up to doing. There was also a pricing issue. We’re not being cheap here because we’ve seen and paid for a wide range of attractions. If it’s worth it we’ll pay for it. Absolutely. Ruby Falls “normal” tour is $27 a head. Their “gentle” (whatever the heck THAT means) 7:45 a.m. trip is $40 each. The Raccoon has several options. A 1/4 mile tour for $29 and takes about an hour. But if you put a helmet on and want to be a spelunker-wanna be, you can spend $60 for about 3 hours.

Remember how we said yesterday the Incline Railway and Rock Falls were a good value to entertainment attraction? In our opinion these weren’t. Maybe we’ll change our mind and come back. We’re aren’t serious cavers but we’ve already done Carlsbad (the Hollywood-style cave system) and Kartchner (the exact opposite but still spectacular). Do we want to add more random caves to our list? Possibly. But for this cave system neither of us felt compelled to add to our cave list. There were other interesting things to do around Chattanooga. So we didn’t do the Falls or the Caverns. All of words are the long way ’round to say that Chattanooga has a lot to do and you should visit here!

So, what to do? We found some other places to go but had a very quiet start to the morning, life maintenance things (the boring bits aka showers and emptying our holding tanks. Everything you do fills the tanks and tanks need to get emptied!) We worked on the blog. Paul also did some ham radio at the nearby Trail of Tears National Historic Trail. We headed into the Bluff Arts District of Chattanooga to walk around, see the sculpture gardens and peer into the quirky shop that were bound to be there. (susan here: wow, that was a snoozer.)

Check out the view from our parking space!

The sculpture on the right rotates with the wind at the top and that building to it’s right is epic, details everywhere.

Off to the sculpture garden, which was mostly metal work from within the last 40-50 years. Like most modern sculpture, it leaves us with a meh feeling.

This is only a small part of the sculpture garden. There was signs all over the place say “No Photography” and “Photo Permit Required” which we both found odd since we are both well aware of the law about photography in public places. It does have nuances, but basically, if you can see it, you can shoot it. There are lots of details but they’re not worth going into here. We googled around for shooting art in public place and really couldn’t find anything. Oh, certainly you can’t photograph art and then sell it, and it is really rude to share it on social media without credit (even then the artist may object). But does that would mean I would grab my phone and take a photo of the plaques, or grab a pen and paper, which I wasn’t prepared to do. So I’ll just link to their website, The Bluff Arts District Sculpture Garden. Pretty lame. They don’t even have a map or listing of the artists on their own website! The site tells you that you could spend the afternoon there. We both find that a stretch. It’s 2 acres, mostly paths and grass. (susan here: It’s amusing that they call it a district. It’s just block. Hardly a district as most people think of districts as being somewhat large.)

We wandered over to the nearby Hunter Museum of American Art. Neither of us was in the mood to go inside, so we didn’t. Sometimes it’s hard to muster enthusiasm for another attraction unless it’s something really cool.

The Walnut Street Pedestrian Bridge is right next door.

The wikipedia page is a good read, as is the Atlas Obscura page.

With a span of 2,376 feet (724 meters), the Walnut Street Bridge is today one of the longest pedestrian bridges in the world and accommodates events such as marathons, music festivals, and a wine festival called “Wine over Water.” Once a symbol of economic expansion, and then downtown decay, the Walnut Street Bridge is now a highly visible icon of the riverfront renaissance undertaken by Chattanooga over the past two decades.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/walnut-street-bridge

Winding through the Bluff Arts District is the 13 mile Tennessee River Walk. Now neither of us wants to walk 26 miles, nor does one have to do the whole thing. But there were an awful lot of electric bikes, rental bikes, that we saw, and that could be a reason to come back. (We can’t do it this trip, we’re actually fully booked until we leave.)

We went back into the Bluff Arts District. Paul was worried about getting towed since the sign said you had to be in the garden or the shops. There was a marker showing a pastry shop, but we couldn’t find it. It must be gone. There was a busy pizza place, and random Fine Arts Gallery and everything else seemed to be closed. So we got in the car and drove to the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum.

We went inside to buy tickets but decided not go into the museum. You see, it would cost $10 each. But for $24 each we could have a 1 hour train ride and then get free admission to the museum. It was after 3, the train was leaving in 15 minutes, and we’d get back and have to rush through the museum. So we bought tickets for tomorrow, which is actually today since Paul is typing this tomorrow, today. Did you follow all that?

So we went shopping instead, off to Target to get somethings we forgot to bring, like a laundry basket. The pillows cases we bought at the Dollar General just really weren’t good enough since they were small. Then onward to Home Depot for a washer and duct tape to fix the banging noise when the metal roof rack “cage” bangs on the metal bumper.

Paul thought it was too early for dinner so we headed back to the RV to hang out and catch up on blogging. Around 6 we found it was now too late for dinner since the Italian place we went to had a 45 minute wait. We called Lupi’s, they had tables available but said the kitchen was slammed with delivery orders and we’d be looking at 45 minutes for our food. With Publix on the other side of the parking lot we hatched a plan to get easy dinner fixings: pre-cooked chicken wings and some frozen french fries for the air fryer. Were eating within a few minutes and a good 20 minutes sooner than either restaurant could take care of us.

But better still, we found these! Paul is so happy.