CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE AND HARRISON BAY STATE PARK

Our last day in Chattanooga was spent going downtown to see and walk on the world's longest pedestrian bridge. Now, that is according to Chattanooga.com. But, I read a review that said this bridge is 1/2 mile across and there is one in New York that is 1.3 miles across.  So, who knows.

Built in 1890, the 2,376 feet Walnut Street Bridge was the first to connect Chattanooga, Tennessee's downtown with the North Shore. According to a plaque on the bridge, Edwin Thacher was the chief engineer for the bridge. The bridge's superstructure was assembled by the Smith Bridge Company of Toledo, Ohio, which was a prolific late 19th-century bridge builder.

The bridge was closed to motor vehicles in 1978 and sat in disuse and disrepair for nearly a decade. Repairs and structural modifications have been made to turn the bridge into what is now a pedestrian walkway. The Walnut Street Bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 23, 1990. The 2,376 foot pedestrian bridge sits near the heart of a massive and recently completed urban renewal project.

The Tennessee Aquarium, Creative Discovery Museum, Hunter Museum of Art, Bluff View Art District, Coolidge and Renaissance Parks, Tivoli Theater, and the newly revitalized waterfront are all within close walking distance of either side of the bridge. Also accessible are several hotels, over 50 restaurants and bars, and several shopping areas. The free electric shuttle can connect you to the Choo-Choo and other Southside attractions.

We walked across the bridge and back.  We went over to the Hunter Museum of Art but didn't go in.  We walked to where the Aquarium was and ate lunch on some tiered concrete seats by the river.  It was a great day with some beautiful sights. They do have 20 miles of hike/bike trail long the river.  The next time we come to Chattanooga, we will do some of the hike/bike trail.  It looked pretty level and you can even ride your bike across the bridge.

Walkway to the bridge

The bridge

Looking at the Tennessee River from the bridge

Some Stand Up Paddleboarders

One of the park areas by the bridge

Fun splash pad for kids and kids at heart

The paddleboat passengers waving at us.

The first structure of the art museum

This statue grouping was named Full Count.  Being a baseball fan, I had to take a picture.

We stayed at a state park, Harrison Bay State Park.  You can pick your site when you make your reservation.  Mr. W has gotten really good at using Google Earth to check out the sites before he books.  This state park was awesome.  It had a marina, restaurant, huge swimming pool, playground, and fishing piers galore.  When we are in the area, we will definitely stay here again.  The site we were in was pretty awesome.  But, we did find another site that we checked out.  We will pick that site next time.  I'm not telling you what site it is either.  You might try to book it when I want it! :) They have water and electricity but no sewer.  They have 2 dump stations that I saw.  The restaurant had a good menu.  The sites are not very level except in one of the loops and that loop costs more than the others.  It was very reasonably priced.  You need to check it out.

Looking from our patio

Looking out from the side of the patio

RUBY FALLS AND ROCK CITY

WARNING: This is going to be a picture intensive post!

Our next stop was Chattanooga, TN.  I went to Chattanooga when I was a kid with my parents on one of the few vacations we took.  I remembered going to Ruby Falls as a kid.  But, I didn't remember that it was in Chattanooga until I started reading the top 10 things to do in Chattanooga.  So, I wanted to go to Ruby Falls.

Several of the reviews I read said to skip Ruby Falls.  They said it was not worth the ticket price, it was a tourist trap, and wasn't worth the time.  Mr. W agreed that we should go and I'm glad he did because secretly, I really wanted to go.

In 1905 the natural entrance to Lookout Mountain Cave was closed during the construction of a railway tunnel. In the 1920s a chemist and cave enthusiast named Leo Lambert thought that he could re-open the cave as a tourist attraction, and formed a company to do so. He planned to make an opening further up the mountain than the original opening and transport tourists to the cave via an elevator. For this purpose, his company purchased land on the side of Lookout Mountain above Lookout Mountain Cave and in 1928 began to drill through the limestone. In doing so, they discovered a small passageway about 18 inches high and four feet wide. Exploring this opening, Lambert discovered the formerly hidden Ruby Falls Cave and its waterfall. On his next trip to visit the cave, Lambert took his wife Ruby, and told her that he would name the falls after her.  Public tours began in 1930. Electric lights were installed in the cave, making it one of the first commercial caves to be so outfitted.

Ruby Falls is named one of the Ten Most Incredible Cave Waterfalls on Earth. It is America's deepest commercial cave and largest underground waterfall. You can take a tour of the cave 7 days a week year round. The highlight of the tour is the sparkling 145-foot underground waterfall.  It's always fifty nine degrees inside of Ruby Falls cave. This makes it a great destination during the hot summer.  Our guide told us that there were 70,000 people who went through the cave last July. Did you catch that?  Seventy THOUSAND people went through it in ONE month. Wow!

Here starts the pics:

This is the size of the space that Leo Lambert crawled through to find Ruby Falls.

Can you see it?

This is the south end of a north bound donkey formation

Beautiful Ruby Falls

It does look like a Western Sunset, right? 

This is what our trail through the cave looked like most of the time.

 

We left Ruby Falls and headed to Rock City.  Another tourist trap?  Probably, but again, I went there as a child and it was actually my favorite "tourist" thing I did in my childhood and I have always wanted to revisit it.  I just couldn't remember its name or where exactly it was located.  I know, I'm old.  I always thought it was right outside the Smokey Mountains in North Carolina.  But, again, when I was looking at things to do, I came across this.  I thought this might be the place and sure enough, after doing some reading and looking at pictures they have posted, I knew it was the place.  I have to tell you, secretly, I was SUPER excited about going here.  Here's a little history about Rock City.

Garnet Carter invented miniature golf. That would be enough for most people. But his mini-golf franchises foundered during the Great Depression, and by 1932 Garnet was looking for a new way to make money.

Frieda, Garnet's wife, had turned part of their Lookout Mountain estate into an elaborate garden. She had marked a trail through its giant rock outcroppings, populating it with odd statues of gnomes and fairytale characters. What Frieda Carter did at Rock City was to take nature and make it better. Her trail winds through grottos and glens, up crevices and along cliff ledges, while crossing and recrossing itself at different elevations. Garnet guessed that people would pay to see such a thing. He advertised it with the slogan, "See Rock City," which he had painted on the roofs of barns and birdhouses from Michigan to Texas. Eight decades later, over a half-million people a year still obey Garnet's command.

There are a lot of rock formations and everything is labeled.  The ones I remembered most was Eye of the Needle and Fat Man Squeeze.  If you are claustrophobic, these could give you cause to make your way quickly through them or turn around and leave.  There is also a swinging bridge that hangs suspended over a very deep gorge.  Once you reach Lover's Leap, the highest point, you should be able to see 7 states according to information posted there.  There are no marked references for the 7 states but let's go along with their claim. 

Several years ago, they added on Fairyland Caverns. This is where children's story characters and Mother Goose nursery rhyme characters are.  They are painted in fluorescent paint and put under backlight.  It is really kind of mesmerizing.  At the beginning of Fairyland, there are a lot of gnomes, and that was kind of spooky.  To each his own I guess.

I loved going here and I loved reliving some of my childhood in my mind while walking through.  If I ever come back to Chattanooga, I will go to both places again.  This day was sort of like eating dark chocolate.  It made me feel good all over.

Here are the rest of the pic:

rhododendrum

This is the swinging suspended over the deep gorge.

You see who is now on the swinging bridge.

Looking from the top of the falls.

There were all under blacklight and in order to get the fluorescent colors, I have to take these with no flash.  This made them blurry.

The 3 Bears and Goldielocks

My grandkids would have loved this.

DE SOTO FALLS AND BRASSTOWN BALD

On our last day around Helen, we decided to hike to another falls.  So, after some reading and researching, Mr. W decided on a hike to De Soto Falls.

A sign at the trailhead explains the name is based on the discovery of a plate of armor in the 1880's, about the time lumber companies began foresting the area. Until 1983 scholars mocked the idea of finding a breastplate intact after 300 years, until an intact sword from deSoto's expedition was found on the King site near Rome, Georgia. Men under Hernando deSoto are known to have been in this mountainous area in 1541. 

There are 2 falls that you can hike to, lower falls and upper falls.  There are actually 3 falls, but the storms in 1993 and 1995 created serious problems at the former upper end of the trail. The Forest Service now has the old trail marked as being under natural restoration, so highest falls are unreachable and it appears they will not be reopened. However, the 2 accessible falls were worth the hike.

The hike was 2.4 miles round trip and what the "experts" call easy to moderate.  It was and it was very shady which also makes for pleasant temps for a hike. We went on a Sunday so there was probably a lot more traffic on the trail than would be during the week.  But, it wasn't bad.  A lot of people bring their dogs and children.  You do have to pay a daily fee to park there.  It is a self-service payment but I did see rangers driving through the lots and checking out who had paid.  There is nothing free in Georgia.

Upper Falls

What almost all of the trail looked like

Lower Falls

We left De Soto Falls and went to check out Brasstown Bald. Brasstown Bald is the highest natural point in the state of Georgia.  According to  two Georgia historical markers, the area surrounding Brasstown Bald was settled by the Cherokee people. White settlers derived the word Brasstown from a translation error of a Cherokee word. Sounding very similar to another Cherokee word, settlers confused the word "Itse'yĭ" (New Green Place or Place of Fresh Green) with "Ûňtsaiyĭ" (Brass). Itse'yĭ, New Green Place, is a Cherokee locative name given to several distinct areas in the Cherokee world, including an area to the North of Brasstown Bald in North Georgia.

Cherokee legend tells of a great flood that swept over the land. Everyone that inhabited the land died except a few Cherokee families that sought refuge in a giant canoe. The canoe ran aground at the summit of the mountain. Having no wild game to hunt and no place to plant vegetation, the Great Spirit killed all of the trees on the top of the mountain so the surviving people could plant their crops. They continued planting until the water subsided.  Does the name Noah and an ark come to mind to anyone else? Maybe it is just me.

On a clear day, it is possible to see the Atlanta skyline according to one of the shuttle drivers.  It was very hazy when we were there.  We had a hard time seeing the mountains in the distance much less Atlanta's skyline.  The U.S. Forest Service has an observation tower there and there is also a NOAA Weather Radio station that transmits from atop the mountain.

One of the 2 clearest pics I could get.

Here's the other one.

Observation tower

HELEN, GEORGIA AND ANNA RUBY FALLS

We left Greenville and headed to Helen, Georgia.  We stayed at a very nice park there, Yonah Mountain Campground.  It is a Coast to Coast park.  So, we paid our $10 a night when we made reservations and they charge an additional $3 per night for 50 amp electricity.  It was time to do laundry and Mr. W had read that the laundry facilities were good and they were.  The sites are not right next to each other.  There are a lot of trees.  The roads and sites are gravel.  They have a clubhouse, playground, pool, and activities.  There seem to be a lot of people living here, but there were also a lot of people using it as a campground/RV park. I would definitely go back there.

We decided to go see one of the waterfalls in the area.  We went to see Anna Ruby falls.  It was not a long hike, but it was a steep hike.  You know the person who finally gets in shape and says that they will NEVER let themselves get out of shape again and then they do?  Well, that’s me.  After all that hiking I did last year, I was huffing up this mountain.  I wasn’t as bad as I was when I started last year, but I wasn’t as good as I was after doing all of that hiking.  ANYWAY, when we reached the falls, it was well worth the hike.  Captain John Nichols found the falls as he was riding his horse one day. He was wealthy and owned most of the land in the vicinity. He named the falls after his only daughter.  Thus, the name Anna Ruby.

 

This ran along the trail

 

Anna Ruby Falls is actually twin waterfalls created where two separate streams- Curtis Creek and York Creek- join at the base of the falls to form Smith Creek, which flows into Unicoi Lake. Both Curtis and York creeks begin on Tray Mountain, Georgia's sixth-highest peak: Curtis Creek drops 153 feet and York Creek drops 50 feet.

 

A shot of the falls

Just because I thought it was pretty..... :)

 It was pretty crowded at the falls.  It was a Saturday.  However, it never ceases to amaze me at how rude and pushy people can be in a crowd.  Everyone there was trying to get a picture of the falls, which I get.  I was trying to get a picture too.  But, get to a spot for a pic, take your pic, and get out of the way.  It wasn’t like the crowd was going to get any less crowded.  You don’t stand in a prime spot, take 20 pics, continue standing there while you look through all 20 pics, decide none of those are what you want, take 20 more pics, etc.  You get the idea.  OK, I’m off my soap box now.

After we left the falls, we decided to go to the town of Helen.  Helen is a little town disguised as an Alpine Village.  There are shops, eateries, and hotels everywhere in the 3 or 4 blocks that are Helen.  There is a river that runs through the town and there were some people floating down the river in tubes.  I didn’t think it was warm enough to be a tube but I bet it feels REALLY good in the summer! I thought all of the stores were overpriced and didn’t really have any merchandise that I was interested in buying.  It is very much a touristy town. They do a good job of marketing it because it is still the off-season and it was crowded. The traffic was bad in Helen and there is no public parking.  All parking lots are privately owned and it costs to park. 

 

Park in town

A small waterfall in the park

We decided to take a break and go to one of the restaurants on the river and have some refreshments while we watched the tubers went down the river.  That was a nice break. 

I think Helen is one of those places that I will check off my list and say “been there, done that.” I really wasn't impressed.