Day 3: From Chattanooga to Gatlinburg

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Today started off great. After a late sleep and breakfast at the hotel, I headed up the mountain to Ruby Falls. Ruby Falls is the largest waterfall within a cave. In an hour-long tour, we learned the history of the falls, how they were discovered, and saw many spectacular rock formations 260 feet inside Lookout Mountain. The more colorful rock formations were creatively named, such as potato chip, elephant's foot, tobacco, steak & potatoes, etc. The tour culminated in the actual Ruby Falls (named for the wife of the man who discovered them).

From Ruby Falls, I headed to the top of the mountain to Rock City. At Rock City, I toured the many gardens, including a gnome underpass, and walked across a swinging bridge to Lover's Leap and the peak of Lookout Mountain, where 7 states could be seen- North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina, Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia. Rock City also featured Fairytale Caverns which is a cavern with scenes from various fairy tales such as Jack and the Beanstalk or Rip Van Winkle.

From there I drove east on a scenic highway through beautiful country in the Cherokee National Forest and the Nantahala National Forest in Tennessee and North Carolina. I visited Fontana Dam, the tallest dam in the Eastern U.S.- it was huge and I could barely see the bottom. Camping did not work out in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, so I had to get a hotwire hotel in Gatlinburg. I drove from the southern border to the northern border of the park however and saw some beautiful views of the Smoky Mountains however and discovered that I had been there before on a high school choir tour (I noticed this at Newfound Gap- the border between North Carolina and Tennessee). I ended the day by eating dinner at Bennett's Pit BBQ in Gatlinburg.

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