Chattanooooga - Day 3 & 4

Day three had us heading off to Chattanooga, Tennessee for the night. It's only a little over 2 hours to drive up there, but we made a short detour along the way.

In the small town of Scottsboro, Alabama lives the place where you find all of the things you never knew you lost. The Unclaimed Baggage Center, home of everything you've ever left behind on an airplane, or in your lost luggage, or probably in the airport too. That's right, it all ends up in Alabama. What does that mean? Not a whole lot. In addition to the racks and racks of clothes, you'll find tons of iPods and every other iPod-like-device ever created. Sounds too good to be true? It is. Everything is priced pretty ridiculously, if you ask me. Sure you save a bit of money over what you'd pay for something brand new, but not that great of a deal, especially for an iPod that looks like it's been to Siberia and back (and probably has). On the gimmick scale, this place rates at 9 out of 10... don't waste your time.

After that brief stop, we continued on to Chattanooga. Getting there requires crossing briefly into Georgia, then up into Tennessee. For probably a hundred miles around, you see signs, billboards, and what seem to be trademark birdhouses all advertising...

"SEE ROCK CITY!"

Rock City is basically what it sounds like, a tourist trap at the top of Lookout Mountain, apparently named because you can look out from the top and see seven different states. I think that's a bit of a stretch, but whatever. You'll see plenty of Rock City in the photo album. It's actually pretty cool, but if it wasn't enough of a gimmick, its biggest draw... the brand new Starbucks across the street. Spare me.

We dropped down the mountain and into Chattanooga, found our hotel and checked in then went downtown to see what there was to do. It was pretty late in the evening so the main plan was to find dinner, but we figured out what was there. We found dinner and then eventually made our way back to the hotel.

On Sunday, we headed back downtown and went to the Tennessee Aquarium. Definitely one of the best aquariums I've ever been to, and the fact that it was raining off and on all day long made it good to be inside for a few hours. We had lunch and wandered around Chattanooga for a few hours before heading back down to Birmingham.

Had barbeque for dinner and then were lazy the rest of the day. Still feels like a vacation.

Monday is the last day before I leave Tuesday morning for another marathon of flights back to Seattle. Good times.