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Lindsey and I took a weekend getaway trip to Chattanooga, TN this past weekend. It’s about a 4 hour drive, depending on what time of day and day of week you’re traveling. We also drove back home on eclipse monday, adding a little over an hour to our travel time.

If you like Greenville, you’ll find a lot to love about Chattanooga, they’ve got a thriving food scene, a really awesome waterfront trail, very similar to the Swamp Rabbit Trail, and tons of other really cool stuff that Greenville doesn’t have.  We had two full days of trying as many things as we could, and felt like we could have easily stayed a few more days and kept them packed with fun.

Saturday we got up early and headed out to Ruby Falls to beat the crowds. Ruby falls is a 145-foot underground waterfall, and it’s breathtaking. The tour takes about 75 minutes, and you have to walk through a cave about 2/5 of a mile each way. It’s super easy, and the temperature in the cave feels great.

After Ruby Falls we headed over to Rock City, not far away, and we bought combo tickets that got us into three attractions for about $50/person. Rock City is a huge garden and rock formation with some amazing views of the River and valley below, A huge waterfall, and plenty of little shops and restaurants to get knick-knacks.

Finally we drove down to the bottom of Lookout mountain and hopped on the Incline Railway, which takes you from the bottom of the mountain up to the top in about 10 minutes, at a very steep incline. It’s really unique, has great views, and a pretty easy trip. I would imagine lines could get long later in the day, but we hopped on around lunch and got right on.

The next day we rented a few bikes and rode the trail along the waterway. It’s Extremely well maintained, and has bathrooms and water fountains along the way. The only downside is on the way back into the city, you hit a pretty good uphill grade that you don’t see on the Swamp Rabbit Trail.

Other cool stuff: We didn’t go to the Aquarium, but it’s massive. We did see a 45 minute 3D IMAX film on space, which was really unique and not crowded. They also have a Free Electric Bus system that runs a pretty long route along the main street (Broad Street if I recall correctly). So we were able to utilize that and keep the car parked at the hotel.

Food: Pretty much everything we ate was top notch. We broke out our Yelp app and looked for stuff pretty close by. On the weekend, there wasn’t much of a wait at most places, except Beast and Barrel, which we tried to walk into for brunch and were met with a 90 minute wait, so we hopped a few doors down to “Good Dog” – a hot dog place with a bunch of unique hot dogs and sausages. We had a killer breakfast at a place called Maple Street Biscuit Company, which I just googled and it looks like there is one at Five Forks in Simpsonville? We’ll be taking a trip there soon to err, investigate further.

All in all, it’s a little longer drive than Asheville, with a ton of stuff to check out. The downside? We were thinking it was going to be a little cooler since it’s sort of up in the mountains (just over the GA/TN border) – we were wrong. It’s as hot as Greenville.

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