Sunday, July 18, 2010

Ruby Falls and Nashville




Friday evening we drove out of Atlanta for about an 1 1/2 hours to Dalton, GA, before stopping for the night. I'm using the GPS to find hotels this year. I don't have internet access on my phone anymore, so I plug in the destination on our GPS, and then search hotels. The GPS gives me a list of hotels and their phone numbers. Isn't that cool!
Saturday morning, we started toward Chattanooga, TN, with plans to stop at Ruby Falls which was only about a 45-minute drive. I had found the idea of stopping at the Falls the night before searching the internet for things to do in and around Chattanooga, and Ruby Falls was a number one idea. Ruby Falls is a cavern with a 140-foot water fall inside of it. It was beautiful. We walked about 25 minutes into the cave before coming to the falls. Then we were able to walk behind the falls which was amazing. From the way the falls fell over the rocks above, it looked like you could see each drop of water falling down. I wish that I would have had a water-proof camera to get a picture of it. I did take a picture in front of the falls, but a picture is never as great as the real thing. The cavern had other neat formations that we looked at. The tour of the cavern lasted only about an hour, and we were glad that we stopped.
Then we drove to Nashville. We weren't really sure what to do there, since we really aren't country music listeners. I work with a lady, Sue, who's son lives in Nashville, so we followed her advice. First we drove to the Hillsboro Village district and shopped. That's were Molly got her Alice in Wonderland charm bracelet. We enjoyed looking.

Then we drove to downtown Nashville to the Crazy Horse Saloon. The saloon has in-line dance lessons every 45 minutes. We had great food; Molly and Brooke each ate 1/2 a rack of ribs! And Brooke and Molly danced. It was great fun watching everyone dancing. Then we walked around Nashville a little.

We took a 20-minute carriage ride and the driver pointed out interesting buildings as we went. We pretended to know who she was talking about and be impressed when she dropped certain names and explained how they were connected to Nashville. There were a lot of people by the arena that we drove past, and we found out that American Idol was holding auditions. One person in a car shouted, "I'm going to be on the next American Idol!" as he drove by!


After the ride we got ice cream and walked on a bridge that overlooked the river that had just flooded. You really couldn't tell that Nashville had recently suffered a big flood, although a few buildings were still not completely repaired. A few buildings that were still closed were pointed out to us on our carriage ride. From the bridge we got a great look at the skyline. People had gathered along the banks for a concert that was to be held. It looked like
the group was going to play on a barge on the river while the people sat on the riverbank. It looked like fun.
Then we got back into the van and drove. Jerry wanted to go for a while, but we were so tired that we only drove about 1/2 hour. Earlier we had driven into Central Time, so although we drove to what was 9:30, it was really 10:30 to us.




































2 comments:

  1. We really liked Nashville (I do like country music, much to my kids' chagrin). Did you get to see the replica of the Parthenon? Pretty cool, actually! Sounds like the shopping was good!

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  2. Love Blair's face in the pic with the creepy horse-head cowboy dude.

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