Chattanooga

When we went out to Atlanta, my Dad was super excited to take us to one of his favorite places:

Chattanooga, Tennessee. 

We rode the Incline Railroad, walked around Lookout Mountain, 

and ate genuine Tennessee BBQ. 

The railcar is made at a 18 degree angle. If I hadn't been worried about tripping and killing myself, I would have taken a picture of the wonky stairs walking into it. It's trippy, and trippy. 

When you sit down (at the bottom of the mountain) your seat is like a lounge chair because you are leaning back and extra 18 degrees. The stairs in the car are shallow and wide, but again, 18 degrees off of normal stairs. My kids were in heaven. They raced down the stairs and plastered their noses on the window looking out. 

The Incline Railroad is billed as the "steepest"  incline in the world. In the winter, when the roads at the top of the mountain are impassable, but the schools are still open, the Incline Railroad works like a school bus, taking kids down the mountain to school. Some people really do still use it to commute. It's also been used to transport medicine and mail. 

When you are riding on it, you pass houses on either side, 

and the locals pleasantly wave at you. 

While we were waiting to go back down the Incline Railroad, Joe desperately wanted to plaster his face against the plate glass door which showed the giant, red wheels and cables used to pull the railcar up the mountain. But, there was a gate, and Mom said no. So he threw Dog over the gate and looked right at me as if to say, "Well, you won't let me go over there, but surely you would let me get my dog back!" No such luck, Joe. I retrieved Dog and everyone stayed on the right side of the gate. 

The boys loved Aunt Tish, with good reason. 

She helped us corral them (bless her!) 

and helped them squish pennies into flat souvenir pennies.  

Ode to joy. 

When we got back to the base of the mountain, I tried to get a picture of how high up the railcar had taken us, but it doesn't really stand out in these two pictures. If you look at the top of the tree line in the middle, you will see a square-ish tree. It's not a tree, it is the visitor's center and the white speck below it is a railcar making it's way up the mountain. It's is slightly to the right of my sister.  

You don't see the white speck railcar in this picture, and the Visitor's Center is in between Tish and Dad in this picture. 

After the Incline, we had some really awesome Tennessee BBQ. There were half a dozen different BBQ sauces on the table, we had fun experimenting with them. 

The wait staff even brought hot damp towels to help us wipe up after eating. 

That's how you know it's good. 

On the side of the restaurant there were a few goats. You know, just right off the highway exit. 

When we headed back south, a section of the northbound lanes of the same highway collapsed. Apparently, someone had set fire to construction materials that had been stored underneath the highway overpass. Forty-five minutes of intense heat later, it fell.

 We lead the exciting life. 

(That's watching tv at the hotel. Can you say jet-lag???)