shovel all the coal in, gotta keep it rollin' / woo, woo, Chattanooga, there you are

(I know I said I'd update Chattanooga Day Two yesterday, but I LIED.)

Day Two in Chattanooga had a leisurely start. We had one destination in mind (about which more later), but this place did not open until noon, and we had some time to kill before then. So we decided to take a five minute-ish walk over to the Chattanooga Choo Choo for brunch.

The Chattanooga Choo Choo is a hotel built in an old decommissioned railway station, with guest rooms both inside the terminal building and in the Pullman train cars, the latter of which are on the old rails out back behind the lobby. Don't get me wrong, our Air BnB was nice, but if I had know that we could have slept on a train? Bitch, we would have been sleeping on a train. (I mean, probably. I did like having a king-sized bed at our townhouse, though. And laundry facilities. And, you know, a shower where I could move my arms around.) But even non-guests of the hotel were free to wander the grounds, and check out the lobby in the old terminal building, which had a Great Gatsby feel that I enjoyed very much. Even the bathrooms were neat, and reminded me of the bathrooms in my old elementary school (plus a chandelier, minus the off-color graffito-tagging).

We had breakfast at the Frothy Monkey, just off the main lobby, which inhabited a gorgeous, high-ceilinged space and featured a solid breakfast/brunch menu. The wait time for our food was a bit long, but it was Sunday brunch, nothing unexpected.

Out in the back courtyard of the hotel, by the train tracks, there were a slew of outdoor games. I wish we had known about them beforehand--I would have sent my kids to go play out there rather than waiting at our table FOREVER (in their estimation) for the food. But here's one of the purposes of me writing this recap: now you know. They had a few games of oversized Jenga, cornhole, and a bocce court, which my kids were obsessed with. Nina, in particular, was freakishly great at bocce. Meaning she beat pretty much everyone she played with, and I can assure you we were not pulling our punches. She's an old Italian man at core, I guess. I sure hope she gets that bocce scholarship when the time comes. (Other PRO TIP: they don't actually care who comes in to play with their stuff. We happened to have just eaten at the breakfast place, but you could also just wander in off the street and play a few rounds, no one was checking, and I think the trains and the station alone are area attractions.)

Our real destination that day, however, was Lake Winnie. Lake Winnie (née Winnepesaukah) is a local "family amusement park" (which I guess they make a point of noting, to distinguish it from all those porn and booze-soaked regular amusement parks) that I was attracted to because of, rather than in in spite of, its old-school bootleg charm. Less than 15 minutes from the Southside neighborhood where we were staying, it was technically located over the Tennessee-Georgia state line, but close enough to Chattanooga to be a local attraction (and a pretty great one at that, if you aren't too concerned about culture and learning and whatnot). It was a good time.

They had your standard state fair type amusement rides. Bumper cars, Tilt-a-Whirl, a bootleg Dumbo ride (conveniently called "Jumbo" so you REALLY WINK WINK NUDGE NUDGE GET IT), midway games, and an old wooden coaster called "The Cannonball" which was ominously closed for a good hour and a half hours after the park opening for inspection and maintenance. My two boys rode it anyway. They didn't die.

Oh right, also, there was this thing, which was featured, in all different color schemes and iterations, some with name tags ("Sneaky" was one) around the park. Seemed pretty creepy and like it would invite all sorts of bad behavior or Instagram photo opps, but IT'S OK, IT'S A FAMILY AMUSEMENT PARK* YOU GUYS.

But I think the real draw of Lake Winnie was the waterpark. The waterpark was, I believe, put in much later as an afterthought, but in my estimation it's way better than the regular amusement park in terms of bang for your buck. (Though: disclaimer, I personally dislike thrill rides, and several of my kids and for sure my spouse are prone to motion sickness. It doesn't mean they don't go on the rides anyway, but afterwards...regrets, we've had a few.) But back to the waterpark. A good number of waterslides, ranging from body slides to tube-ride spaghetti slides to a quad-pack of those super-steep wedgie-inducers; a lazy river, two water playground ares for the smaller kids, a some aquatic obstacles. The height cutoff was 42 inches for even the most demanding of rides, which meant that none of my kids were excluded from anything (thus eliminating the potential for needless jealousies and strife), and everything was neat and clean and no one caught herpangina. (Yet. I suppose I could be jumping the gun with our "HYGIENE COP IS PLEASED" all-clear signal. But it all looked very clean, and I didn't see any floating Band-Aids or errant turds anywhere in sight our whole time there. (Though I did see a lot of interesting tattoos.)

(Yes, we shelled out the big bucks for Dippin' Dots. No, I don't care if my kids go to college or not. Yes, I am Sean Spicer, and complained loudly while eating all of it.)

We stayed at Lake Winnie for about three and half hours. I think we could have stayed longer, but my kids were getting a bit tired, and I'm in a firm believer in the "too much of a good thing" principle. (In a word: don't.) So we headed back to the apartment, vegged out for about an hour and a half, and then headed back out for dinner.

Dinner was at Stir, one door over from the Frothy Monkey where we had brunch. It. Was. GOOD. I deliberately wanted to choose a place that didn't have too much of a "southern food" emphasis (personally I can't eat like that for more than a day and a half--really became a problem that time I went to the ASA in New Orleans and by the time I got home I never wanted to eat again) but Stir was more of an oyster bar slash elevated American fare with some Southern farm to table thrown in to round it out. I would have more pictures of what we ate, but it was gone by the time photography occurred to me. (Also, I know this is such a stupid dumb precious hipster thing, but I love it when a place has artisanal ice. It fascinates me--the dimensions, the clarity, the way it looks in the glass. I ordered an Old-Fashioned 80% for the ice cube. And then I ordered a second one because someone drank most of my first glass. And then my kids ate a third of my oysters so WHAT THE HELL DID I EVEN GET TO EAT THAT NIGHT?)

After dinner we walked back to our Air BnB and watched Wonder Woman, because Feminism. And that was our Chattanooga weekend. In sum: 36 hours was just about right. Did we do everything we were interested in doing? No. Do I want to move to Chattanooga? No. Will we be back to visit? Probably. It's close, it's easy, and my kids had a great weekend. Which means we had a great weekend too.

Regarding the song "Chattanooga Choo Choo," which I somehow know very well--I had a Glenn Miller's "This Is Jazz" Greatest Hits CD and listened to it when I was in college on a fairly regular basis. Because I am, and have always been, geriatric. "Chattanooga Choo Choo" and "Pennsylvania 6-5000" were among my favorite songs on that CD, so I guess we'll be going to Philly next chance we get. (The best part of the latter song is when they chant, "Pennsylvania Six-Five-Oh-Oh-Oh," and if you disagree with me on this point I will fight you.)

* Oh, one last thing. When we were leaving the water park through the main amusement park, I got chased down by one of the park attendants, who said he couldn't allow me to keep walking. I was wearing a one-piece bathing suit (full coverage, no parts showing--particularly because I have no parts to show) but he wouldn't let me proceed until I covered up. "That's fine," I told him pleasantly, "let me just get my clothes from my bag." (Joe was still walking and carrying the bag and about 30 feet ahead of me.) But the park attendant stood directly in my path blocking my way and literally wouldn't let me keep walking any further all bare naked as I was. So I had to call Joe on his cell phone (he didn't hear me yelling) and have him double back to bring me my shorts. It's not the park attendant's fault--he was just doing his job and doesn't make the rules--but yeah, wow, FAMILY PARK INDEED.

bend and ear and listen to my version / of a really solid Tennessee excursion

Ever since I moved to Atlanta (good God, nine years ago), people have been expressing, or at least feigning utter surprise, that I have never been to Chattanooga. "YOU'VE NEVER BEEN?" everyone always says, aghast, like I'm some kind of Abnormal, even though, GUESS WHAT, there are lots of places I haven't yet been, and Chattanooga hasn't really exactly numbered on my "must see before I die" list of travel destinations. But I wasn't opposed to the notion of visiting Chattanooga either (truth is I simply knew nothing about it apart from the Glenn Miller song), and so when we had a Labor Day weekend with no plans and neither of us on call, we figured, fuck it, let's just go.

The drive from Atlanta to Chattanooga is just a hair under two hours, and though I usually like to get an earlier start on travel, Cal had a lesson Saturday morning which meant we couldn't hit the road until just about 10:30am. So when we arrived to Chattanooga, the first order of business was finding some lunch. We ate at the Maple Street Biscuit Company in the downtown area, conveniently located near the area's largest attractions.

So the thing about Chattanooga, like many cities of its ilk, is that if you're visiting here you should expect to eat a lot of Southern food. This place was no exception, and they did it well. Breakfast all day, specialty biscuits, dishes served with a side order of heparin and a statin to garnish. Joe happens to be something of a healthier eater, leading quite often to a phenomenon that occurs in restaurants where we eat together; when they bring our food, they reflexively put his order in front of me. I guess they always assume The Salad is for The Lady, whereas in reality, I usually am the one ordering the atheroma on a platter. I appreciated the presentation of the salad, but it's just not one of those things that I will usually eat on purpose. Salad should, in my opinion, be consumed purely incidentally. No, YOU shut up.

I do a fair amount of research before we travel (lodging, attractions, dining, mapping out the relative distances between each on Google Maps and creating elaborate itineraries with drive times and walkability indices) and the reason I had picked this particular restaurant beforehand was because it was within walking distance of our first destination, which was the Creative Discovery Museum. Atlanta's own children museum is, in my opinion, barely a museum (I think at the bare minimum a museum should expend a little effort to teach you something--I would have no objection to them calling the Children's Museum of Atlanta an indoor play space, for instance, and yes I know kids learn by playing, but the word museum needs to mean something) but I'd heard good things about the children's museum in Chattanooga, and per Trip Advisor it looked extensive and worth a visit.

I've discussed in the past that when you have a pretty big age spread in your kids (to recap, my oldest son in 12 and in the 8th grade, my youngest kid is 5 and in kindergarten--I also believe that there is a middle kid somewhere in there) often times the activities you pick are not ideally suited for one or the other bookend kids, simply based on age. This was one such experience. Absolutely not a complaint at all--this was a great museum, and I would go again--but it's ideally for kids under the age of 10. (That's the party line of the museum, though personally I think 8 is kind of the max cutoff for solidly buying into the experience.) Anyway, there were still a few things Cal got a kick out of--for example, there was an exhibit where you could design your own roller coaster (employing the principles of potential and kinetic energy, angular momentum and that sort of thing)--and as the oldest he's generally game to just sort of get dragged along in any number of activities that are pitched somewhat too young for him. But I only put this footnote in to warn people that, if you have a family of older elementary or middle schoolers, this might not be the destination squarely suited for your party.

(Chattanooga also has quite a large aquarium--this is just down the street from the Creative Discovery Museum and almost certainly the bigger attraction--but the reason we didn't go there is because we live in Atlanta, where we have quite a good aquarium ourselves. So I didn't much see the point of driving two hours to go to another, different aquarium, particularly since we only planned to be in town for 36 hours. However, the aquarium might be a better option for kids with the age spread we have, and if we ever return to Chattanooga we may check it out.)

After the Creative Discovery Museum, we checked into our Air BnB, which is always somehow thrilling for my kids, though of course we engaged in the standard squabble over bedding options. This particular place we're renting has a master bedroom with a king (which was, as we'd determined beforehand, for the grown ups--though we did let Nina in bed with us so she could be the hellish kicking crossbar of the "H" all night), one full-sized bed (which my boys determined was NOT BIG ENOUGH for the two of them to share) and a full-sized pullout couch in the living room. There was a bit of a fuss over who would take the less choice sleeping arrangements (determined originally to be the sleeper sofa--I told them they'd have to take turns), followed by a whiplash-inducing flip-flop after I made up the pull-out reeeeeeal nice that the sofa was now, in fact, the prized bed, with the full-sized real mattress downgraded to Utter Bullshit. There is, by the way, quite literally nothing my kids aren't able to argue about. It's truly a gift. (She said modestly.)

After a little rest and a change of wardrobe (the printmaking exhibit at the museum did a number on our clothes by way of inkpad application gone horribly wrong), we headed out for some dinner and recreation at Southside Social, which was about a 10 minute walk from our apartment. Southside Social is...well, they're a self-described "family-friendly boutique bowling alley," but I think what would be more accurate is that it's a family-friendly bar and restaurant with lots of activities on site.

In addition to a 10-lane bowling alley, they also have ping pong, skee ball, pool, shuffle board, an outdoor courtyard with corn hole and horseshoes and firepits, that kind of thing. Basically it's place you can park yourself for a few hours and let you kids play while you have a beer. There is no cost to do any of the activities outside of bowling (though you do have to let them hold on to your ID to check out ping pong paddles or pool balls or corn hole beanbags or what have you), and the food, while not sensational, was solid and well-priced. Just your typical bar fare. Burgers and pizza and shrimp tacos and Ceasar salad (ordered by...not me). The fish and chips were solid.

Southside Social allows kids on site until 9:00pm (at which point they bring out the strippers and start playing Platoon on all the flat screen TVs, I guess?) but we left just shy of 8:00 because Joe pointed out that the Florida State-Alabama game was starting up soon, at which time the place would rapidly become "intolerable." (His words. I love sports, as you know. The Nye Mets are my favorite squadron.) So we took a short walk over to the Hot Chocolatier down by the main Southside drag. This is sort of a boutique chocolate shop that also serves drinks and desserts, and since it was the only place nearby that even approximated an ice cream shop, I'm sure they do some good business. The boys each had a gelato, and Nina and I each had a "frozen hot chocolate," which is nowhere near as good as the ones they serve at Serendipity 3 in New York, but it was very sweet, so...that's fine too.

One more quick note about this neighborhood. I think it has a lot of character. I think there is the chance that some people walking around might feel that it looks kind of dodgy--and in some cases, smell kind of dodgy, as there's a chicken processing plant down the street that lends a particular and not-so pleasant aroma to the air (to the point that neighbors directing us to Southside Social gave us walking instructions that bypassed that block entirely). But I kind of like the grittiness of the environs. It's not glossy or pretty for the most part, but it feels real, and I like seeing the crumbling facades and bygone signage and architecture of an old city before it gets replaced by the new.

Judging from the types of restaurants in this neighborhood, this may be in the process of slow change. But having a chance to peek under the rapidly spreading patina of homogenization is, I think, quite charming, and I've been enjoying it.

Tomorrow, Day 2 of 2. (Dinner in the diner, nothing could be finer, than to have your ham 'n' eggs in Carolina.)