Day 5: Chattanooga, TN

Turns out it was the right call cancelling our camping reservations in the Smokies. We drove through some pretty intense rain on route to Chattanooga this morning from Huntsville. That same rain made it's way up into the Great Smoky Mountains. In fact, when I checked the weather around 8 this evening it was still raining in the mountains.  Camping would have been a whole lot less than ideal. Tomorrow's forecast isn't much better, clear in the morning but rain throughout the day. So. Here we are in Chattanooga.

We headed straight for the aquarium today because it was raining pretty good when we got here. I had no idea what to expect from the aquarium, I had not researched it at all. But, Mike said it was a go, so we went. I really didn't have high hopes. The aquarium was really very very nice. It's divided into two halves, one focusing on river life and one on ocean life. Two separate buildings. The buildings are tall and don't look big from the outside. They housed so many exhibits though, and all were very well done. We've been to a whole lot of aquariums over the years, this one was great.

We explored the river life half of the aquarium first. By the time we were done the rain had stopped (although that turned out to be a temporary lull) so we walked across the way to a little spot for lunch.  More rain showers came during lunch, but it finally seemed to all clear off by 3. After lunch we took advantage of the breaks in the rain and walked around Chattanooga by the river for a bit. It's quite beautiful, some interesting history displays about the iron foundries in the 1800s. Pretty terraced hills with flowers, a very large art museum which we didn't have a chance to visit. Gave the kiddos some ice cream and then headed for the ocean half of the aquarium.

There's a waterfall near here called Ruby Falls. Again, didn't know much about it but thought it might be worth checking out. We drove up the hills to it, turns out it was in the kitschy tourist trap area and it costs a ridiculous amount to see, so we scrapped that and checked into the hotel.  It was just the odd hour that was too early for dinner but too short to go explore some of the other things we wanted to do. So we swam in the hotel pool. That was refreshing, kids loved it. Found some dinner, walked around a bit enjoying the now absolutely gorgeous weather. The heat and steam from all the rain has blown off and it's quite cool and beautiful out. Mike and I would have walked around more but at least one of the kids was visibly tired and the extreme amount of bickering back at the room was a sure sign they are both pretty exhausted. So, that ends day 5.

For fun... we hit the first 1000 miles on our drive over here today, and we have officially been through 6 states now (Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia). I was very glad to have brown car today and not a rental. We gave the car a lot of love before we left to make sure she could get us around.  She did well in the weather today.  We have a 3+ hour drive to Gatlinburg tomorrow. Hopefully the weather will be a bit better than today. Just 5 days in, and Texas feels like a lifetime ago, and thousands (well just over one thousand anyway) of miles away.