The girls have this week out of school and we haven’t yet had much of a chance to have any family adventures during this break. So, on Sunday Mickey and I cooked up a plan to change all that. We decided to take a day trip up to Chattanooga, TN and visit their kids’ museum and aquarium. I am SO thankful that we came up with that plan because we all had such a GREAT time!
Chattanooga is a really fun place to visit. We went a couple of summers ago and have been wanting to go back for awhile now. We really didn’t want to be gone long, so a day trip was the perfect family get-away. We left on Monday morning and arrived in Chattanooga in time to have lunch at Big River Grille & Brewing Works. It’s been awhile since we’ve been to Big River (the last time we went, Macey was less than two) and it was just as good as we remembered. After lunch, we made our way to Creative Discovery Museum. This is one awesome children’s museum, y’all! We were there for about two hours and never once did the girls get bored. We didn’t even get to everything, to be honest, but the girls had a blast with the things we did. (We didn’t miss much – I think just the outdoor play area and it was COLD, so that was okay.) I would highly recommend this museum to families. I have heard great things and it lived up to every bit of the hype. Well worth the trip just for the museum. After we played at the museum, we hit up Chili’s for some quick desserts and then checked into our hotel. I had booked online through Hotwire and gotten us a room at the beautiful Sheraton Reed House. We stayed there the last time we went and really enjoyed it, so it was nice to go back. The only bummer for the girls was that I didn’t pack swimsuits, so they missed out on the great indoor/heated pool there. The hotel is right downtown and is convenient to great attractions, so it’s a fantastic place to stay in Chattanooga. Once we checked in and freshened up, we were ready to set off on another adventure. Chattanooga has a free electric shuttle bus system called CARTA that runs downtown and we took the shuttle bus down to the Tennessee Aquarium. The Tennessee Aquarium is always a lot of fun. We all enjoyed it. I can safely say that the girls’ favorite exhibits were the butterfly garden, the penguins and the octopus. We also loved seeing the sharks! The whole aquarium experience was a lot of fun! We had dinner at Mellow Mushroom after the aquarium and then headed back to our hotel where we watched Rio and had some good chill time together. It was a great little day trip full of adventures for our family!
If you’re looking for a great family vacation spot, consider Chattanooga. There is so much there for families to see and do together. We only hit two of the highlights, but there are MANY more nearby attractions such as Coolidge Park, Lookout Mountain/The Incline Railroad, Ruby Falls, Rock City and more! If you stay downtown, think about catching the CARTA shuttle buses when possible because they are free and energy efficient. It’s an easy way to get around downtown Chattanooga. There are great places to eat in Chattanooga too. It’s really a fun place to hang out and have fun as a family.
I hope everyone’s week and year (wink) are off to a great start!
Kelly