Weekend trip to Chattanooga

This past weekend Donna and I travelled to the Nashville area for the annual "Masters of the Summer Music Games" drum corps event; we've attended this event the past several years, and it's always very enjoyable. Unfortunately this year it began raining during the fourth corps' performance, and after an hour of monitoring the radar and seeing no end in site, the officials called off the rest of the event. At least we got to visit with Duke and Tom, two of my Ninja 250 buds in the Nashville area, and Duke's wife Heather. Afterward we headed down to McMinnville where we stayed the night, and then Saturday morning we headed to Cumberland Caverns, a spectacular cave in McMinnville. It was incredible! I enjoyed Ruby Falls that I recently saw, but Cumberland was more a true cave with huge rooms, whereas Ruby started out as a tiny shaft leading to the falls, and blasting was done to give access to the falls.



Following the cavern we headed to Chattanooga and had an early dinner at Big River Grille and Brewing Works, where we had a pair absolutely spectacular steaks, and I had a couple of pints of their very nice very dark stout. Though we were stuffed and lying down for a nap was quite tempting, he walked across the street and spent the next three hours at the Tennessee Aquarium, which just blew me away. It featured many wonderfully-designed exhibits, and the flow design is incredible. There was a temporary seahorse exhibit, which was quite neat, as I find these little creatures quite intriguing. Fortunately they're open until 10:00pm on the weekends, so we stayed right up until closing time, after which we grabbed some ice cream at Ben & Jerry's and then headed down to Ft. Oglethorpe, GA, where we stayed Saturday night.

Sunday morning after a superb breakfast buffet at Golden Corral we headed over to Chickamauga National Battlefield and spent a couple of hours checking it out, followed by a drive up Lookout Mountain to the Cravens House and Point Park, where we toured the Cravens House and walked around Point Park, which offers some spectacular views over Chattanooga.



Overlooking Chattanooga from Point Park




Snodgrass House: Wounded soldiers from both sides were treated here


Outcropping at Point Park




Sufficiently worn out, we headed homeward, and we managed to squeeze in our one necessary Cracker Barrel meal of the trip around Knoxville. We got home around 1:00am exhausted, but with many good memories. What a great weekend!