Trip-Trap-Trip OR We Went to Chattanooga!

I love doing vacation blogs.  I post pictures.  I make pithy comments.  People get entertained.  It's all win-win.  Plus, every hit gets me closer to 1,000,000 on my counter.  I don't know what will happen when I get to a 1,000,000.  Could be fireworks.  Could be confetti.  Could be meatcake.  (You have to be a George Carlin fan to get that one.)

Anyhoo, during our holiday break, I said, "Let's take a road trip."  This might have been a mistake on my part, but I went with it.  Chattanooga is not far away and they have lots of cool stuff to do.  So we went, leaving the moron cat in the care of a pet sitter.  (She doesn't think he's a moron, but then she likes animals a lot more than I do, and I like animals.  Really I do.)

First thing I saw on the way out of town was:


This is a Piggly Wiggly.  A Piggly Wiggly
is a grocery store for those of you
north of the Mason Dixon Line.  There is nothing
really funny about a Piggly Wiggly except the
name, which makes me giggle every time
we pass one.  Luckily for me and all the other
drivers involved, I don't live near too many of them.
 

The rest of the trip was uneventful.  We passed a nuclear plant and had a brief round of how-does-it-really-get-pronounced.  Nuke-u-lar.  I just can't say it the other way.  Oh, well.  I did not take a picture because I suspect the NSA has cameras posted on the road to take a picture of me taking a picture of them.  I do not wear an aluminum foil hat, I swear.

But we got to town and immediately went to the aquarium.

Cressy points out the aquariumness of it all.
Nice hat, eh?

Then there were lots of things to touch in the aquarium.

Cressy didn't want to touch the rays and the sharks, but
I did.  HIM said his sleeves were too long, but
it was really an excuse for why he didn't
want to touch the rays and the sharks.

There were lots of tanks with fishes inside.  This is an aquarium that knows how to entertain the kiddos.

Cressy demonstrates how to exist in a bubble.

Later on I got to touch a Giant Calcedonian Gecko, which really riled up the people on my author's page on Facebook.  (It felt a little like Velcro.)  But after that a Blue Morpho got to touch me.  In fact, he/she wouldn't get off my forehead.

I know it doesn't look blue, does it?
(Maybe it's on Prozac.)
When the wings open up, it's totally blue.
Strangers were taking pictures of me, too.
I should have flashed them.

We followed up the aquarium with a boat ride, where we saw 10 bald eagles.  Personally I saw 6 bald eagles, but the tour guide informed me that I had seen 10, two of which were juveniles.  I did not get a photograph, but if I had, it would have looked just like this one:

Seriously, my pictures showed a very distant blob on a branch,
although we did get to look at them with binocs, my
camera was poopoo for capturing the moment.

Cressy quickly got bored with eagle watching and subjected HIM to the infamy of bunny ears.  Also twenty-odd people pretty well saturated the inside of the boat with their hot air and made the windows all covered with condensation, so the visibility was for crap.  I started a trend by using my sleeve to wipe it off, but soon my sweater was soaking wet and the crew finally broke out some rags.

"Are we done yet?"
"Are we done yet?"
"Are we done yet?"
"Are we done yet?"

Finished with a three hour tour, (Well two and not a single professor in sight.  The professor was my favorite character.  I think he should have gotten together with Mary Ann.) we checked into the hotel.  The view was of the baseball stadium!  Oh joyfulness!

And the hotel had a swimming pool!  You had to walk past it to go to your room.  There was no escaping it.  Inside our room we determined the room was haunted because the drawers of the dresser kept coming open by themselves.

It was freaky because I didn't want to put my
clothes in their drawers anyway.

The hotel room also had weird decorations:

I couldn't figure out if they were going
for music, surfing, woodys, or bowling pins.
It was eclectic.  I totally had to spell check
that word.

The next day we overwhelmed ourselves with a trip to Ruby Falls.  This is a waterfall inside a cave.  I think a couple of people missed the cave part because as soon as they saw the narrow passage they freaked out and went right back up the elevator.  The tour guide, named Doug by the way, was way too excited about all of us.  Just as I was beginning to wonder if there was, in fact, a water fall, we finally made it, and my camera on my phone actually did something good.

They got colored lights set up on this thing, plus
muzak.  I don't remember the song but
Doug was worshipping the waterfall so
it became kind of moot.  Doug was seriously
worshipping the waterfall.  He had his hands
in the air and was bowing.  I guess some
people will do anything for a paycheck.

Then we went and found the incline railway.  When they say it's an incline railway, they mean it's an incline railway.  At one point it's a 75% grade.  Couldn't see much from the top but who cares, it was a 75% grade.

This pic doesn't do it justice.  And btw, I took
it from the observation platform not the top
of the train.

So exhausted we went to get lunch and look at the inside of the hotel again.

The hotel had funky rugs.
HIM took the kid to the children's museum.
I napped.

More swimming in the pool ensued.  Fortunately other people with children were there and our child played with their children.  A pool makes for instant lifetime friendship.

We also walked along the waterway and the sun went down:

Cressy chased sea gulls, but I didn't get a picture of that.  I was too busy pretending she wasn't my child.

The next day we went home and the cat was happy to see us, but not before we drove by this:

One hasn't experienced the wonder of fireworks
if one hasn't been to Big Daddy's Fireworks.  Pardon
me, I mean, BIG DADDY'S FIREWORKS.
This sign is a lot bigger than it looks in the picture.
See the ordinary sized billboard on the left for
comparison.

Finally, I ran out of pithy things to say.