Chattanooga

Last week was Spring Break for the entire state of Georgia. We originally had planned to go to the beach (We have family there) but some big storms came in and we decided to stay closer to home. I wanted to make one day special for our kiddos and do something a little different, so last Thursday I woke up, and decided we’d take a little road trip that day!

We only live about 2 hours away from Chattanooga and none of us have ever been! We’ve driven past it lots of times on our way to Nashville, but never had the chance to stop and explore the city. The main thing I wanted to take the kids to was Ruby Falls, a cave in Lookout Mountain that has a 145 foot waterfall at the end of it. My inner Geology nerd was super excited to see all of the rock formations and go inside a cave.

I will say, I remember thinking to myself “This is going to be such a cool place to take pictures” and then as soon as we got down in the cave I realized- duh. It’s a cave. There’s no light. There were a few lights along the path so I’ll share the few I took, but you’ll just have to trust me that it was really neat.

The boys LOVED being in the cave. It is setup so that almost anyone can tour it and there weren’t really any places that the kids could get hurt or run away at, so they had tons of fun getting to climb the walls of the cave, touch rocks, and explore. Sawyer was really interested in the cool looking rocks and couldn’t wait to see the waterfall. They had a few videos and sound clips along the way that the kids actually paid attention to and taught a little about how this cave was found.

The waterfall at the end really is as impressive as you can imagine. They’ve added lights and music, but even without all of the production, it’s amazing to see the beauty of nature and what it can do over millions of years. We spend about an hour in the cave and everyone agreed that we couldn’t wait to go back, it was the perfect place to take three little boys (although keep in mind if you visit, there are no bathrooms in the cave, so take everyone before you take the elevator down in to the cave!)

Lookout Mountain also has some amazing views of Chattanooga. The boys loved using the viewfinders, even if Ford had it backwards the whole time

There was lots to do and see just at Lookout Mountain and the drive down the Mountain was gorgeous. Spring is my favorite time when everything is budding and turning green.

Our next stop was to see the grave of Brandon’s personal hero, Desmond T. Doss. He was a World War II Veteran who had high values and was a hero. I could write tons more about him, but you’d be better just looking up his story yourself on Wikipedia. I was grateful that Brandon got to honor him at his grave, he has talked about visiting it for years now.

We finished off our day with dinner at a restaurant before climbing in the car to go home. The kids were exhausted and Ford was asleep within minutes. It was the perfect day-trip from our house and we definitely want to go again to see more of Chattanooga! If you have favorite places in Chattanooga to recommend for our next day trip there, let me know!