Addendum To Abingdon Post

Patti reminded me that I forgot to include the real highlight of our time in Chattanooga, Ruby Falls. After we picked up the car we made our way back to Chattanooga and went to Ruby Falls, an indoor waterfall in Lookout Mountain. It is truly spectacular. To get there, you need to drive up a windy road. Once you have parked the car you enter the building and buy your tickets and then conveniently wait in the gift shop until your tour is called and you descend 260 feet in an elevator to the beginning of the tour through a limestone cavern. The falls were accidentally discovered by Leo Lambert in 1928 after he crawled through a very narrow passage for 17 hours until he came to a place where he could stand and walk and he ended up discovering the falls which he named after his wife Ruby. He and a team sank an elevator shaft and started working on making a path through the limestone walls. Along the way there are numerous stalagmites and stalactites that have been forming for millions of years and are still continuing to form. If I live for 90-95 years, I will be considered old; but in comparison with the formations in the cavern my time on earth will be like the blink of an eye. The falls are 90 feet high and breathtaking as they cascade down to the pool below. The lighting effects in the cavern add to the drama of the spectacle. The walk is about half a mile to the falls and back to the elevator and it is important to watch your step and your head because stones can be slippery and the overhead clearance low; and it is totally worth it. The tour lasts about one and a half hours. It also gets four definite thumbs up from us.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Catching Up From Abingdon, Virginia

It's been a few days so I will do my best to update what we have been up to. We arrived in Florence, AL and on our first morning there we set out for a loop tour of Florence on the provided bus. The tour got off to an inauspicious start as we discovered that the entire area of the loop had no power, so we decided to stay on the bus, make the loop, and hope the power would come back on. On our second go round we got off the bus and went to the art museum that was the first stop. Here the inauspiciousness continued as there was still no power and no art on display because the museum was between exhibits, so we made our way on foot to stop 2, Popes Tavern. It was at Popes Tavern that the lights came back on. The docent told us Popes Tavern was probably never a tavern, so the truth was stretched a tad to make it a more interesting sounding tourist stop. It did serve as a hospital for both Confederate and Union troops in the Civil War and had Civil War artifacts on display. Feeling enco...
Read more

Franklin Street Fair

  Today we went to Franklin (I was mistaken in the first post when I said the street fair was going to be in Spring Hill) and attended the street fair. There were many booths selling artwork, jewelry, food items, clothing, and other items. The crowd was large, orderly, and friendly. There was a real positive vibe to the whole day. We lucked out for lunch and found a table that had just been vacated outside in the shade so not only could we eat, but we were also able to people watch. The food was good and reasonably priced. After we had ice cream and we started making our way back to the shuttle one of those moments of pure serendipity occurred. I spotted someone I knew. First, a little background. In the late 1990s Dianne and I were in the adult chorus at Carondelet High School. A neighbor of ours, Shawn Johnson, who had a daughter who attended Carondelet was in the chorus with us. Shawn moved to Franklin, Tennessee in the mid 2000s and Dianne and I actually spent a night at her ho...
Read more