My younger brother Jon and his wife Brenda drove from Texas to Chattanooga to spend a week with me and Karen. There is so much to do in our area, the real challenge was not to make their vacation too tiring.
We relaxed on our patio by the lake Sunday morning and went to the Chattanooga Market around noon for the Busker Festival. The huge farmers’s market is housed in a vast warehouse with a profusion of sundry vendors. We sampled infused, maple syrups and soaked up the ambiance, but the only buskers were guitar players.
No visit to Chattanooga is complete without boarding the Chattanooga Choo Choo. The historic Chattanooga Depot is now a hotel with restaurants and lots of vintage train cars on the tracks out back and plenty of plaques to relate the history.
Point Park sits high atop nearby Lookout Mountain. The Civil War battlefield is the location of “The Battle Above the Clouds” and features a memorial celebrating the North-South Reconciliation.
Point Park’s history is all about the vantage-point views Union troops held for the battles to control Chattanooga. We could see our condo on Chickamauga Lake from the northeast face.
For our hiking day, we drove to Foster Falls Recreation Area in Sequatchie, TN. After the steep and rocky descent to the base of the falls and back, we rewarded ourselves with dinner at Top of the Rock Restaurant in Jasper Highlands.
Our longest drive took us to Sweetwater, TN and The Lost Sea caverns. 140-feet below ground level, according to Guinness Book, is “America’s Largest Underground Lake.”
We took an electric-boat ride on the 4-acre lake that is 70-feet at the deepest point. Confederate soldiers made gunpowder from bat poop in this cave. There is a larger body of water in an adjoining room, but it’s completely flooded, so non-navigable and not a lake.
The nice folks at Tsali Notch Vineyards let us roam through their vines and sample all the Muscadine grapes we wanted. “America’s Wild Grape” is sweeter than most. The Muscadine Mothervine was discovered on Roanoke Island at the Outer Banks of North Carolina in 1584.
We went boating on our last day to play. We locked through the Chickamauga Lock which is a 45-foot drop on the Tennessee River. After a quick visit to Chattanooga’s waterfront, we locked back through and motored up Chickamauga Lake for lunch at Amigos. It was a cool, cloudy and comfortable day on the water.
We had a great time with Jon and Brenda. They were up for anything and we took advantage of the endless activities available in our area. “Nice folks Y’all come back now, ya hear?”