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.

[JWR]

Good day of riding. Nice shots.

Thanks

[Water Warrior 2]

Looks to me like you had a real great day. Thanks so much for sharing with pics and some history of the area. I do have a feeling that you found the mythical creature and didn't realize it. There has to be a story behind that purple rhino. ?????????

[burkbuilds]

That purple Rhino was sitting in the middle of Coolidge Park, right across the river from the Hunter Art Museum. I wasn't the only one there snapping pictures of it, it's pretty big, I'd guess between 12' and 15' long.
Chattanooga has put an enormous effort into transforming the old downtown, especially around the waterfront. When I was a kid, Chattanooga was one of the countries most polluted cities, now you can see the mountains that surround it, which was seldom true in the 70's. In 1980 the only reason anyone went downtown was to work. It was pretty much a ghost town after 6 PM and empty on the weekends. Now it has a thriving waterfront, lots of new Condo's built on both sides of the River, dozens of cool restaurants, several major museums, the Aquarium, and they have festivals and stuff going on almost every weekend during the Spring, Fall and Summer months. The old Walnut Street Bridge, which is the one with the old stone pilings and steel superstructure all the way across the River in my pics, was destined for destruction several years ago, but was instead rescued, restored and is now a no vehicles allowed walking bridge. They hold "gatherings" there all the time, and it is a popular spot for people to jog or walk and enjoy the view from. In the 70's the Hunter art museum was simply the old Mansion in the middle of the complex you now see, it was fairly limited, now it is enormous and there are walking bridges leading to it from the Riverfront area and it is a big draw. Surrounding the Museum are streets full of bed and breakfasts, and popular restaurants and amazing views of the river and lots of outdoor art displays like sculptures and such. Even the buildings are "artsy" in their designs. Several years ago they moved the local baseball team, the Chattanooga Lookouts, from old Historic and falling apart Engle Stadium to a spot just above the Aquarium overlooking the Tennessee River and downtown, it's a fun place to spend an evening watching farm team baseball and enjoying the atmosphere of the ballpark. After the game you can walk down the hill and eat at a nice restaurant, or go to the Imax theatre for a movie or dozens of other options. The Riverbend festival usually draws crowds of about 100,000 people nightly to hear great music and enjoy the downtown Riverfront areas, it's a very popular event. They also have weekly downtown music events called "Nightfall" every Friday night in the warm months with great world class musicians and it's all free, unlike Riverbend where you have to pay to get in. You will find that motorcycles are welcome downtown, the cops seem to set up an area where cars are blocked but motorcycles ride on thru and park and then the cops almost seem to guard the bikes during the evening's festivities. It's a very relaxed southern atmosphere and any time I've been to "Nightfall" it's been pleasant and no hint of crime or violence going on, lots of police presence there and everybody's just having a drink and enjoying some music and the street vendors wares.
COME ON DOWN YALL!

[zenbutcher]

It's funny to see pictures on here of my hometown... I just have this idea in my head that all of you guys are from thousands of miles away. Anyway, nice pics BB. Maybe a ride is in order sometime.