DAY 2 of Traveling to Chattanooga

Morning Breakfast

Tennessee Welcome Center

Lover's Leap

Ken & Yolanda standing under a rock with a waterfall to their left.

Photo op on the Swing-a-long Bridge with Chattanooga providing the back drop.

The Pony Club meets Dolly Parton.

Miles and Dolly conversing.

Gnome Valley on lookers.

A tight squeeze through Fat Man's Squeeze.

Dianne holding up a balanced rock in order for us to get through.

A rare white deer, called a Fallow Deer, considered an "Old World" deer.

Meeting up after breakfast in Birmingham, we loaded up our various paraphernalia and headed for Lookout Mountain and the Gnome heaven of Rock City.

Making our way past Georgia (we couldn’t find a good Georgia sign for a photo opportunity) we stopped at the Tennessee Welcome Center, where we were greeted by an enthusiastic hostess who photographed our gang for posterity. Evidently, she decided that we might be a fun group to hang around because she kept showing us different areas in the Welcome Center that she thought were great photo opportunities. That’s where we met up with Dolly Parton.

We seem to have a knack for creating a commotion wherever we stop so by the time we realized that we had changed time zones and it was 1:45 ET we decided that it was time to move on to the next location to wreak confusion and mayhem. So we headed out to Rock City.

On our quest we were came across a quaint little neighborhood café. We stopped in to have a quick bite and stayed a little longer than anticipated, due to our waitress kept getting confused about who ordered what. When our food arrived we all had exactly what we had ordered with the exception of Miles. He had no food. Poor lady, I don’t believe she will ever be the same, however she seemed to have fun waiting on us.

When we finally arrived at Rock City we were ready to see Chattanooga from cloud height, and we weren’t disappointed. Not all of us realized that it was a hike to get to the top of the mountain so that we could see all seven states, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky and of course Tennessee. On our venture to the top we saw a 90-ft. waterfall, experienced sea legs on the Swing-a-long Bridge, saw a rock shaped like a face, squeezed through Fat Man’s Squeeze, visited Fairyland Caverns and felt nostalgic twinges through Mother Goose Village. By the time we were back at the ponies we were sun beat and ready for happy hour.

We checked into our rooms and immediately sought out the lively outdoors bar where there was a band playing (according to the young lady who checked us in) “hippy music”. Two cocktails later, we climbed into Tony’s cab and headed to downtown Chattanooga. Miles and I had prepared everyone for a carriage ride through the quaint downtown. All of us agreed that our meals at Hennen’s Restaurant were absolutely delicious and we were ready to venture on to the carriage ride. Unfortunately, we never could find a carriage so we called Tony. He arrived shortly after and swept us back to our hotel where a good nights sleep will be much appreciated.