CHATTANOOGA

October 28, 2011  Dateline: Joe Wheeler State Park, AL USA

Yesterday, Rich and Carol went with Wayne, Francine and Skipper to Chattanooga.  They first went to visit Ruby Falls.  The falls is located approximately a quarter mile underground in a cave and falls 145 feet.  The falls have been created over millions of years as the moving water dissolved the soft limestone.  The falls has lights on it that change color making it even more beautiful. The entrance to the area where the falls is located is full of stalactites and stalagmites as well as some columns where the stalactites and stalagmites touch each other. 

Next at Rock City, they saw this plug for electric cars.  By the way it works very well when you insert a credit card.  There were two such machines and they gave the users better parking places than the handicapped.

Chattanooga Choo Choo

Today, they went to the Chattanooga Terminal Railroad Station which was abandoned in 1970 and was scheduled for demolition.  In 1971, a group of citizens saved it.  Today the CHATTANOOGA CHOO CHOO serves as a hotel, conference center, model railroad museum and shopping mall.  The model railroad is 174 by 33 feet.  It has 3,000 feet of track, 129 locomotives, 320 structures and 1,000 freight cars.  The hotel offers some unique rooms; they are in remodeled and refurbished old railroad cars that still sit on the terminal tracks. The rooms are very fancy. You can also have lunch or dinner, informal and formal, in a railroad car.

They all went to the International Towing Museum.  Ernst Holmes built the first recovery vehicle in 1916 in Chattanooga, thus it is a fitting place for the museum.  There are more than 15 old wreckers in the museum’s collection as well as hundreds of wrecker models.

Carol bought Rich a big box of Moon Pies (12).  Moon Pies were first made in Chattanooga.

Looking down from Raccoon Mtn.

On their way back to MY WAY and me, the happy wanders went to Raccoon Mountain.  The top of the mountain has been removed and a 528 acre water storage facility created.  During periods of low power demand water is pumped up 990 feet from the Nickajack Lake of the Tennessee River to the storage facility.  During a period of high demand the water is released back down the  penstock and electricity is generated.  It takes as much power to pump the water up to the storage facility as is created during the period of generation.  The electricity used to pump the water up is generated by hydro power that would otherwise go to waste. Even though the facility is net neutral it stores power somewhat like a rechargeable battery that can release its stored power in periods of high demand.

Tomorrow I am off to Grand Harbor marina at the northern terminus of the Tom-Bigbee Canal. Sunday I will be starting my trip to Mobile, AL.