Day 35 – Ruby Falls, Lookout Mountain, and the Drive HOME

735 Miles

Reluctant to see this wonderful, truly memorable, once-in-a-lifetime vacation end, we squeezed in some more sights before beginning the final drive home.

The area around Chattanooga, Tennessee is well known for its natural beauty, so we started at one of the most famous places: Ruby Falls.

Because some of the area’s attractions are on private property, it’s not all part of the National Parks Service. However, there are discounts for visiting multiple attractions, which is what we did.

First, we went to Ruby Falls, the tallest and deepest (publicly open) underground waterfall in the U.S. I was unaware that significant underground waterfalls even existed, so I really had no idea what to expect. Our family purposefully avoided looking for images on the internet in advance.

To reach the waterfall, ticket holders first take a private tour through an extensive cave system. The story we were told on the tour was that the natural entrance to Lookout Mountain Cave was closed during the construction of a railway tunnel circa 1905. However, a man named Leo Lambert, who lived near the cave as a boy (prior to its closure), remembered the cave was there. In the 1920s, he created a company to buy some surrounding land and drill from the top of the mountain until the cave was rediscovered. Eventually, a small area of the cave, barely big enough to crawl through, was exposed. Lambert and a friend descended and followed the restrictive space for hours until they reached a point large enough to stand, and then rediscovered the waterfall, dropping an impressive 145 feet at roughly 1120 feet below the ground level. Lambert’s company later completed drilling the shaft in order to make an elevator for tourists. It opened as “Ruby Falls Cave” in honor of Lambert’s wife, Ruby, in 1930.

Throughout the cave is an impressive array of formations, many of which Lambert named plainly, and with dry wit: Steak and Potatoes, Tobacco Leaves, Elephant’s Foot. In fact, having been to Mammoth Cave only a day earlier, our family commented several times about how much more there was to see in this significantly smaller cave system. It was magnificent. And then came the waterfall itself.

They hype it up, to be sure. You stand in a dark room and can hear the water. Then suddenly, lights and music come on, set to a ten-minute timer. This gives everyone in your group a chance to take photos of the glorious fall in all its glory. Sure, it’s a bit dramatic, but when you’re there, it totally works. I’ve really never seen anything quite like it, and we enjoyed it immensely.

It was tempting to head home to Florida after that highlight, especially considering we had at least eleven hours of driving ahead of us. But our combo tickets also included both an incline railway (“The world’s steepest passenger railway!”) as well as entrance to Rock City Gardens, which includes the famous “See Seven States” view from Lookout Mountain itself. So again, looking to stretch this incredible vacation to its final minutes, we sweat it out on a hot day in the funicular, enjoyed the uniquely beautiful Rock City Gardens, and took in the views from the top of Lookout Mountain.

Only after all of that did we finally aim the poor, hopelessly dirty Kia Sorento back toward Naples, Florida. We pulled into our driveway just before 1:00 am on July 10, having completed our thirty-five day journey of 9797.5 miles across twenty-three states and two Canadian Provinces.

We’d do it all again in a heartbeat.