The video is fixed — don’t know why it wasn’t playing, but I just re-“compiled” it and it seems fine.
Update: Some folks tell me the video stops halfway through. I give up on this one…
Day: July 10, 2007
Rock, Preferably Without the Roll
Soon, J will be flying back to Polska. K and I wanted to take her on some kind of semi-extended semi-vacation before she left, but where to go?
Our trip had several constraints from the beginning
- relatively inexpensive (we are, after all, buying a house),
- relatively close (we don’t, after all, have a lot of vacation time), and
- relatively interesting for J.
So we did the logical thing: we went kitsch.
America is filled with kitsch, and the common view from Polska is that “Americans like kitsch.” There was only one place that fulfilled all our criteria: Gatlinburg.
But we knew that it would be relatively expensive to do much there, so we sandwiched it with a half-day in Chattanooga and a day in Cherokee.
Our stops in Chattanooga were about as kitsch as could be, in some ways: Rock City
and Ruby Falls.
Very American: take nature, and improve it with sidewalks, elevators, and safety barriers. And above all, make it auto-accessible.
We had fun, though. Rock City brings out the little boy in everyone, and Ruby Falls, while overly theatrical (not to mention amazingly crowded in the summer), is a fairly impressive sight.
Photos of our adventure are available here.