Visit Ruby Falls!

If you've ever made the drive up I-75 from Atlanta to Chattanooga you've seen the red signs saying, "See Ruby Falls."  You can't miss them, I promise.  Well, Stephen and I did just that.  We were on our way to Lookout Mountain to do some hang gliding (so exciting!) when we got the call more than an hour into our 90 min drive that it was too windy on the mountain and they would not be doing any hang gliding that day.  BUMMER.

Instead of turning around and driving home we decided to see what Ruby Falls was all about.  I'd been before, but didn't remember much about the tour.

It goes like this.  Lookout Mountain is made of limestone and limestone mountains have tons of caves, many still undiscovered and unexplored.  In the 1920s, a cave that had been open for a very long time and a favorite to natives in the area was closed.  A very wealthy man, Leo, was one of those natives and decided to drill from the top of the mountain down to his favorite cave.  Along the way he hit a burst of air and saw that he had discovered a new cave.  he spent 17 hours exploring the cave and discovered the underground waterfall he named, Ruby Falls, after his wife.

After a mile hike into the mountain through a path that has been cleared for tours you arrive at Ruby Falls.  It's beautiful.  They keep the lights off until everyone on the tour is in the cavern and then they turn them on.  It's pretty breathtaking.  It's hard to capture how pretty it is in a single picture.

The falls are over 100 feet tall and scientists are unsure where the water comes from.  They haven't been able to track back to it's source but they do know when there is a lot of rain, the cave will flood.  

I didn't take pictures along the hike to the falls because it's really hard to make pictures of rocks interesting and it's hard to tell what the pictures are of without being there and seeing them in space.  

After the tour, back above ground we went to the top of the observation tower to check out the view.

Chattanooga is pretty tiny, but there is a pretty river.

Here are the standard we-don't-have-anyone-to-take-a-picture-of-us-together pictures.