Chattanooga Choo Choo!

Last week was James's spring break, but not mine.  Since I don't work on Fridays, though, we took the opportunity to have one last hoorah trip together before the baby.  We only live about 3 hours from Chattanooga, and the city has a cool-sounding name, so that's where we went.

We figured it was a bad idea to go to Chattanooga and not do anything train-related, so we opted for the incline railway up Lookout Mountain.  The wait to get on said train was about 45 minutes, but when there were two extra seats in an earlier car and James said we'd be willing to help them out, the other passengers took one look at us and let us go ahead.  Ah, the perks of pregnancy.  This railway was pretty cool.  When you got in, the angles of the seats and the superfluous "steps" of the walkway between the seats were a bit off, but it wasn't remarkable.  However, by the time you get to the top, the angles were perfectly upright and the steps formed a staircase to climb out.

You see, this car went from being flat on the ground to resting at a 72.7% grade/incline.  That's pretty steep.  This is the steepest passenger railway in the world!  One mile at an incline steadily increasing until the end when it's almost straight up.  The car had windows on the roof, and if you look in the picture, you can see that the only way to see straight out to the city in front of you is to look through the roof.  There are two cars on the railway that pass in the middle and work on a pulley system.  It's a pretty cool setup.

The railway did warn us that the altitude change might take us by surprise, and we quite enjoyed the idea of altitude sickness at the mountain's height of 2100 feet.  It is a tall mountain in the middle of an otherwise flat area, so the difference in height is fairly impressive, but not all that dangerous to people familiar with other mountains.  At the top of the picture here, you can see here the last bit of track (in black) by the station at the top. See? I told you it was steep!

There was once a Civil War battle atop this mountain, and one of the big problems the soldiers on top faced was trying to shoot cannons at the oncoming troops; when they'd aim the cannon, the cannon ball would roll out because the angle was too steep.  Thus began the American Bowling Association.

We also went to the Tennessee Aquarium.  (Let's be honest: this aquarium is the real reason we chose to go to Chattanooga.)  It was fantastic!  The aquarium is so big that when you get a ticket, you get into two separate buildings - one for freshwater fish (River Journey) and one for the ocean (Ocean Journey).  We started with the River Journey (the bigger of the two).  This was incredible!  You start at the top and circle your way down the whole building.  They had all sorts of fishes as well as frogs, turtles, alligators, crocodiles, birds, etc.  (The top part gets natural light and warmth, so the birds just flit around pooping on people.)  We got to pet big old sturgeons, watch a squabbling trio of brother otters, and there were some incredible tanks deeper in with ENORMOUS arapaima.  My favorite were the paddlefish with their long snouts and their sometimes-opened-and-gaping mouths patrolling the waters.  

James's favorite was the electric eel.  (This was James's first time to an official aquarium, by the way!)  Many places, the TN Aquarium included, hooked up the electric eel tank to some LED lights and a speaker that showed when the eel was giving off any electricity.  We happened to arrive around feeding time, so it was neat to watch Mr. Eel search for and eat his pray and listen to the speakers crackling. At one point in the feeding, one of the other small fish in the tank brushed against the eel's back and spooked him.  The lights and speakers went CRAZY and then....there was a dead fish floating above Mr. Eel.  Dead fish.  Zap.  The end.

In fact, we were so impressed by the freshwater aquariums that the ocean was kind of a letdown.  We got to pet sting rays, and they had a butterfly garden room, and they had some truly fantastic jellyfish exhibits, but their main tank that extended in little pockets around the building wasn't as fun as the big tanks in River Journey.  Yes, they did have sharks and penguins and corals, and they were lovely.  But the electric eel was hard to top!  Both buildings were by far the best aquariums I've been to, and it was very fun.

We also went to Coolridge Park, which connects to Walnut Bridge which is, we were informed, the longest pedestrian bridge in the US.  It's been a day of big deal visits!

We drove home through an enormous and windy rainstorm (it turns out we drove through a Tornado Warning...oh, wow, that season's started again, has it?) but we're back and set for the next while.  When we hear the train go by our house, we'll just smile and remember.