Day 47: Wet & Wild in Chattanooga

Friday, November 5th - Tennessee Aquarium

It was a rainy, overcast, unseasonably cold day, so we needed to do something inside. When I asked the woman at the campground desk what we absolutely needed to see/do in Chattanooga, she did not say, "Go see the train." I was surprised when she said, "Don't miss our aquarium, as it is rated the best in the United States!"  After all, isn't the only thing we know about Chattanooga the song, "Pardon me boys, is that the Chattanooga Choo Choo?" The brochure claimed it to be "One of the Top Attractions in the U.S.," according to TripAdvisor. This definitely was #1 on her list. Don and I were leery of this recommendation, as we are somewhat museum-ed out. It was a drab day and the aquarium was down by the riverfront, so we went.

Amazing how local people, of course, know what is best. We have been to quite a few aquariums and many within the past year, including Sea Ocean World in China, and the Tennessee Aquarium here in Chattanooga was truly phenomenal. They have two buildings - River Journey and Ocean Journey. We decided to go to the Ocean first, which turned out to have been the way to go. 

River Journey has the spiky glass roof and Ocean Journey building is to the right.

Ocean Journey was opened in 2005, so it is really new by aquarium standards. The two aquariums are all privately funded with gifts and donations, many from corporations. You walked in and took escalators up 4 huge floors and followed the signs for the exhibit trail. A good part of the museum is interactive and learning-based, without being preachy or boring. Don petted a sting ray. Many of the rays in the non-touch exhibits were incredibly unique in color and patterning, thus very new to us. The butterfly exhibit blew us away and Don had trouble getting me to leave.

We spent a major part of our visit in Ocean Journey sitting and watching the saltwater fish putting on their show in the massive tank that covered three floors. They had comfortable benches in the nooks and crannies, so we found a secluded spot and watched the schools of fish swim by. It was so peaceful. How come all the fish that are the same species/type stay (and swim) together? Isn't that what people generally do, too? We saw two divers enter the tank, one with a microphone, and she spoke to the crowd via a staff member sitting at our feet and using audio speakers outside of the tank. Later they fed the sharks (and other fish), but these fat, well-fed sharks were rather lazy eaters.

One of six sharks in the tank.

After three hours in Ocean Journey, we went to the IMAX movie that was included in our admission ticket. We saw a super 45-minute show on the repair of the Hubble Space Telescope. It felt good to sit, eat a little popcorn and watch the amazing images from space. We felt mighty small in our gigantic universe, which is only one universe of the billions out there, as we left the theater. Actually, rather mind blowing.

Brrrrr. It's now almost five o'clock and we still had the River Journey building to go through. The aquarium is open until 8:00 PM, but after 6:00 no one else can come in. The neat part about it being later in the day is that we felt like we had the aquarium all to ourselves, like the movie, Night in the Museum. Not quite.

River Journey was the older aquarium and river animals just aren't as colorful as sea creatures. Our favorites turned out to be the "Jellies," (some saltwater animals were stuck in River Journey?), a seadragon and a couple of crazy turtles. Okay, we are getting a little tired and silly. See for yourself in the pictures below:

Can you see his sea horse head?

These turtles were a riot. They have long, filament thin fingernails/claws on the ends of their front flippers. The one on top kept rapidly waving these thin nails over the eyes of the turtle on the bottom. Is this some kind of crazed sex-dance of the turtle variety? The poor guy on the bottom kept moving away. You can swim, but you cannot hide!


We are finding Chattanooga to be a pleasant "surprise" city and we are definitely coming back tomorrow to walk along the riverfront. Hope it's a much warmer day.