Confessions of an RVer: 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: