Rock City at Christmas

There was a woman named Barbara in a lot of my design classes in college. I didn't realize it then, but she was very influential to me and my love of kitsch. She was super great and I wish we had kept in touch. I do remember her telling me that I HAD to get down to Rock City. And I did, more than once: 2009 (for our first wedding anniversary!) and 2012 (with the pugs!). But she told me the best time to see it was at Christmas.  You can go any day of the week, but we had to go down on a Saturday because of Travis' job.

 The lines to get in where SO LONG! It sucked because we have a membership, but they have no membership line, and you still have to pay for the lights. Once you wait in a forever long line to get your tickets, you have to get into ANOTHER line to get into the place. So 45 minutes after getting there, we were finally let into Rock City. And into another line to get onto the trail. It was terribly organized, especially since they do it every year! Maybe it was because we went on a Saturday, I don't know.

 These lighted birds were pretty cool. 

 Every little sign seemed to be decorated. There werent that many lights out though, which is weird.

 It was mostly this kind of stuff. Rocky the elf is so weird with his muscular legs and fat cheeks.

 About halfway through the trail you get to Lover's Leap and you can see a beautiful view of Chattanooga at night. We listened to a boy's choir (so high pitched and awkward!) and decided to decorate a gingerbread man together. It wasn't very cute. Haha. I didn't start with a plan, and ended up with tooooo many things going on.

 So much of the decorating was just this kind of stuff. I really wasn't impressed, epecially for the price they were charging and the amount of people that were there! And parts of the trail were closed off, some of my favorites like the hall of the mountain kind and the swinging bridge.

 The line to get into fairy land caverns. Pretty cute.

 Waiting in another long, slow moving line. There was a sign that made it seem like they had redone all the scenes in fairyland caverns to look wintery! But they had just added a Santa or two.

 So all in all, I'm sad to report that the Christmas lights at Rock City did not lead up to my expectation. I really wanted some kitschy tacky fun, but it was mostly just tacky. At least I got to see Travis in a gnome hat. And now I know. We'll go back in the spring and see all the sights again in the light of day!