Chattanooga, Scenic City of the South

[burkbuilds]

It was really nice this morning and I was itchin' for a ride. My first thought was to go find one of the tag-o-rama tags up on Lookout Mountain at Rock City, so I headed out. From my house in Fort Oglethorpe I headed out Highway 2A (Battlefield Parkway)and turned off at the foot of Lookout Mountain to head into Historic St. Elmo on Tennessee Avenue. I was in search of a mythical creature and thought I might find one at the foot of the mountain where the incline railway heads up the side of the mountain. If you aren't familiar with it, the incline is basically a trolley car that rides up a set of rails from the bottom of Lookout Mountain nearly to the top, and it gets pretty steep going at some point. They bill it as the worlds steepest mile. Well, no luck finding a mythical creature, so I headed up Ochs Highway towards Rock City. I've been up and down this road a lot in my life, but this was my first time on a motorcycle, it was a blast! Lots of nice curves, I think I counted about 30 "twisties" in the course of the 5 minute climb. Most were fairly relaxed, only a couple of horseshoe turns in there, but adding curves to the grade up the mountain was fun. On the way up you can see one of Rock City's major tourist draws known as "Lover's Leap". There is a great view from there, supposedly you can see parts of seven states from the point. Pretty cool waterfall and a great view of the Chattanooga Valley and downtown Chattanooga.



I didn't find anything to use for tag-o-rama at Rock City, but just past it I found my mythical creature shot.



Rock City is famous for having signs all over America painted on barn roofs, billboards, big rocks, you name it. They don't paint as many as they used to, but I found one of the work trucks that they use when they go out to do a job.


When I headed back down the mountain, I decided to divert over to Scenic Highway and cruise by another tourist attraction, Ruby Falls. Basically, Ruby Falls is the worlds tallest underground waterfall, and sorry, no way to get the bike in there, so all I can show you are pictures of the outside of the buildings from the parking lot.



Next I headed downtown, and man did I pass a lot of bikers. I even saw one group that was all lady bikers, about 40 of them heading up Lookout Mountain as I was leaving.
Thought I'd show you some pictures of the waterfront in Chattanooga. They are getting ready for a big music festival starting next Friday and lasting about 10 days called "Riverbend". There is a world class Aquarium, and if you are into art then the Hunter Art Museum and the "Art District" are a great place to go. Lot's of bed and breakfast places there and great restaurants and outdoor cafe's and such. Here's some shots of downtown Chattanooga from both sides of the River and some of the bridges.

























While I was in the area, I wanted to snap some shots of a house I helped work on a few years ago. It belongs to a retired surgeon in town that loves art and he has been a major supporter of the art district revival here in Chattanooga. Dr. Portera is a pretty good artist himself, he turns wooden bowls on a lathe and his entire family really has a niche in the art world. They built this house on top of an old bread factory, and restored it to working order. The bread factory bakes bread for several of the art districts restaurants, and it smells wonderful. It was kinda torture working above it every day and smelling that wonderful aroma but not being able to eat it. The house itself is pretty cool, three stories and very neat design. The roof is all copper, but has now tarnished, when I was there working and it was new it would blind you with the reflection.



The Doctor's family also helped build and furnish this sculpture garden out in front of their home.



I helped install this piece when it arrived, it looks like a boiler blew up to me, but they paid over $100 grand for it.






Here's another shot of the house I meant to include it earlier.


Finally, here's a shot of some folks out Kayaking on the river.


Well, there's a lot more to see, but if you are interested, why don't you just come on down, Chattanooga's pretty easy to find, basically at the crossroads of I-75 and I-24 near the Tennessee Georgia Border. Hope you enjoyed the shots.