The Chattanooga envelope is a plain white business envelope with "CHATT 3/19" on the front in Sharpie. When I dumped it on the kitchen table Sunday night, it held eight receipts, one parking stub and a MoonPie wrapper that Jack insisted was evidence. Every food trip we take gets an envelope, and every envelope gets added up before it goes in the drawer. This one came to $512 for two days and four people.
Spring break lined up for both school districts this year, and Ryan took two vacation days. We booked one night instead of two, because the second night is where a short trip stops being a cheap one. Chattanooga is about 142 miles from our driveway: I-840 over to Murfreesboro, then I-24 down off Monteagle, which is the only stretch of road Nora photographs with her eyes shut. Chattanooga runs on Eastern time, so we left at 7:30 and lost an hour we never got back.
Wednesday: the aquarium and a bridge
We ate turkey sandwiches out of the cooler at a rest area, so the first real money we spent in town went to the Tennessee Aquarium. We stayed almost four hours. Jack parked himself at the stingray touch tank and had to be pried off with the promise of penguins. Nora took 140 pictures of those penguins on my old phone, and about thirty of them are in focus, which she says is a good percentage for penguins.
We checked into a plain hotel a few blocks up from the river, paid for the garage once and didn't touch the car again until morning. Downtown is easy on foot, and there's a free electric shuttle for tired legs. After the aquarium we walked across the Walnut Street Bridge, an old truss bridge that belongs to people on foot now, over to the North Shore. Jack rode the carousel at Coolidge Park while Ryan and I sat on a bench and did nothing at all for twenty minutes, which is the real luxury of spring break.
Dinner was at a burger place on the North Shore with a line out the door. The line moved fast and the burgers were fine. Jack gave his a 7 because "the bun was bigger than the burger," and he wasn't wrong. That was $63 with the tip, and the most ordinary meal of the trip.
Thursday: biscuits, the Incline and MoonPies
Breakfast was the meal I had planned the whole trip around: a Southern breakfast place in an old house near downtown, with biscuits, sawmill gravy, country ham, cheese grits and fried apples. Our family has a one-bite rule on trips. Everyone tries one bite of the local thing, and after that you can order whatever you like. Here the local thing was red-eye gravy, which is just country ham drippings loosened with black coffee. There's no flour in it, so it stays thin and salty and soaks into a biscuit instead of sitting on top. Nora took her one bite, made a face and ordered pancakes. Jack ate his biscuits and gravy and gave them a 9, the top score of the trip. Breakfast for four came to $44.
From there we drove over to St. Elmo for the Lookout Mountain Incline Railway. The track runs about a mile up the side of the mountain and gets steeper than 70 percent near the top, so the car tilts and the town drops away behind you. Jack stood at the downhill window the whole way up. Nora photographed the view, then the ceiling, then her brother's ears. At the top we walked out to the overlook and looked down at the river bending hard around Moccasin Bend.
Last stop was MoonPies, which were first made in Chattanooga in 1917. A little MoonPie shop downtown sells every flavor, so we bought a mixed box and four RC Colas for the drive home. My dad still calls a MoonPie and an RC a working man's lunch. Jack rated the banana one an 8 and took off two points because it stuck to his teeth.
Where we saved: I booked the hotel in January at a Wednesday rate, we packed lunch for the drive up, and we walked everywhere once we parked. Where we didn't save: the tickets. The aquarium and the Incline together were the biggest line on the sheet after the hotel, and I would pay it again tomorrow.
What it cost
- Gas: $39 (about 300 miles round trip with the mountain, roughly 13.6 gallons at $2.89)
- Lodging: $139 (one night downtown, tax included)
- Food: $171 (aquarium snacks $14, dinner $63, breakfast $44, MoonPies and RC Colas $22, a late lunch on the drive home $28)
- Admissions: $150 (Tennessee Aquarium and the Incline, round trip, for four)
- Parking: $13 (the hotel garage, overnight)
- Total: $512
- Food per person: $42.75
