Chattanooga, TN – Guild, TN – October 12, 2008

There are some attractions in Chattanooga we wanted to see where a car, bus or taxi was needed. Guild, TN., where Keely met us with a rental car, was 33.5 miles and 4 hours away from Chattanooga by boat, yet only 20 miles and 15 minutes by car. Since we needed to back to Guild anyway so Keely could pick up the car and drive to the airport Monday afternoon, we changed our plans and left Chattanooga early this morning. We docked at the marina, picked up the car, and drove back to Chattanooga.
Even though we are now retracing our steps, and will be until we start going south on the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, we are seeing new things. We passed the TVA’s (Tennessee Valley Authority) Raccoon Mountain pumped storage project. A 520-acre lake was created on top of 1,100 foot Raccoon Mountain into which water is pumped from the river during times of slack power use. Then when there are peak demands for electric power, water is allowed to flow down the mountain through giant tubes and turbines to generate electricity.

We arrived back at Hales Marina at 11 a.m., docked, had lunch and were back in Chattanooga by 1 p.m. The first thing we did was drive to the top of Lookout Mountain, where we took a ride on the Incline Railway. The Incline Railway is the steepest passenger railway in the world, with a 72.7% grade. The railway was originally built in 1895 to avoid the 4 hour road trip (about 20 minutes today) necessary to get to the top of the mountain. The views are really spectacular. We found that Lookout Mountain is the southern most mountain in the Appalachian Chain.

After our trip on the Incline Railway, we went to the Ruby Falls cave. Ruby Falls was discovered over 75 years ago when a group of men were trying to find the original site of the Lookout Mountain Cave. Ruby Falls is a 125’ high waterfall and is the largest underground waterfall open to the public in the United States. In order to see it we took an elevator 260’ down and walked 1125’ into the center of the mountain. The tour took 1 hour and we walked 1 mile.

It was very beautiful in the cave. There were stalactites and stalagmites and columns (when stalactites and stalagmites meet). There were many unique formations as well as an earthquake fault line. We took many pictures but, again, the pictures don’t represent the beauty we saw.