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!

Estate Sale Finds

This is a pretty belated post, I forgot I had these pictures hanging out on my camera card! This is what I got from a sale that was in a great little ranch house. Travis and I actually talked about "what if we sold our house and bought this on" while we were there. There were lots of granny crafts, which is my favorite! Eartha Kitsch beat me there, and you can see the great stuff she get here.  I love the cat painting she got, and that styrofoam turtle! There was also a little bottle of glue with a knitted cover, but it was missing it's top. I'm SURE it was a poodle, and looked all over the house, but just couldn't find it. Here is what I did get...This weird thing is made out of a glove! I just couldn't resist. Weird dog craft with googly eyes? Sold!
I got this sweet pair of horse pins, and I want to make a sweater gaurd out of the flower clip ons. I had never noticed a pair of horses like this, but since I picked these up I've been seeing them everywhere!

A sweet little dog pincushion that makes me thing of Phyllis. She lays is really awkward positions like that sometimes.

This is what is inside that little "seal a card" envelope up top. The blue pages you can write a note on, then fold up to send through the mail. Then there is a polaroid of a handsome man at what looks like a grocery store, a valentine, and a picture of an owl that looks like it was cut out of a book.

I love reusable doilies! The monkey is made of cork! The owls are handmade magnets, and I love pipe cleaner candy canes too!

There were some framed images of the Rock City black light caves advertised with this sale, but they were snapped up when it opened. I was really bummed, but then I found this book from the 70's that included pictures of it! Hooray! I've always tried to take pictures in there, but always failed, and internet searches came up mostly empty too. Thank goodness I found this! 

The Christmas book is about Santa visiting a carnival. It is a pop up book that has some pretty great pages. I love the sword swallower in this page. There are a couple pop ups missing, but for 50 cents...

And look at that pretty little tattooed lady!
I'm waiting for Travis to wake up so we can go hit a sale that has over 1000 dolls! I never thought those words would tempt me, but they have some really cute vintage stuff! It is run by an antique company though, so we'll see how the prices are. 

Phyllis and Priscilla go to Rock City

I love Rock City, and when I found out recently that you can take your dog there, I have been looking forward to taking Phyllis and Priscilla. Can't you tell how excited they are by that picture? Haha! A nice French couple offered to take that family portrait for us. I'm so happy they did! Even if the 'kids' look less than thrilled. 

Rock City opened to the public in 1932. The owner's wife loved European folklore and imported German gnome statues to put throughout the trail. It is really kistchy and cute. I really want to go at Christmas. We bought season passes this time so we have no excuse not to go back once they put up the lights! 

We saw a few more dogs on the trail.
I love the old names of the rock formations. There are lots of places that you have to squeeze through.
My little goblin.

It turns our Rock City isn't the best place for two differently-abled pugs, especially two really tired ones. We ended up carrying them most of the way, they were not into the stairs, or the dark passageways. It was still fun though!

Travis and Priscilla on the swinging bridge.

I found this vintage photo of Lover's Leap last year and have been keeping it with me so I could take a picture of it with the real one. Nerd alert!

Phyllis didn't like getting too close to the edge or seeing the view, but Priscilla didn't mind. Probably because she couldn't really see the view.

Pretty amazing view though.

I couldn't stop laughing while we were taking this!
Hall of Rainbows.

My favorite part is Fairyland Caverns! There is a fairyland neighborhood at the top of the mountain that has a similar sign. The caverns are a series of caves with black light fairy tale scenes! It is creepy and cute at the same time! Perfect right?

The entrance.

I tried really hard to get some pictures to show you, but these two were the best. Believe me, if you are a kitsch fan you need to visit! You will LOVE it!

Snow White! My favorite part is a big room at the end that is a Mother Goose village. It is huge and you walk around and see all kinds of nursery rhymes, like Jack and Jill and Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater.

Sadly the gift shop isn't good. I did like that cat purse though! Most of it is really cheap modern souvenir stuff. They have some funny gnome hats, to bad not dog sized!

Here they are on our way out. I was so happy that they slept the whole way home. It was kind of exhausting traveling with two little dogs, I don't know how mom's do it! I'm so glad we went on this little trip, even if it left me itching for a longer road trip....

Chattanooga Anniversary Trip

Hey! I did day in my life while travis and I were only our little anniversary trip! the trip was so fun! even though it rained a lot.
good morning travis! i pack a little car snack. i hold myself back from packing a cooler, since it's only a 2.5 hour drive.
seeeeee, i overpack! for some reason the kitten was really scared of the luggage sitting there.

bye house! we're so excited to be on the road! i see a sign for ruby falls really close to our house! so exciting.
you can see travis' cat wounds from a cat rescue gone bad. poor thing.  getting close! we talk about going to that steak and shake for lunch. but we forgot about it later.

the lobby of our hotel! we are staying in! the historic chattanooga choo choo. it's so pretty! i couldn't get a good picture because of all the light coming through the windows.

we are staying in a converted train car! which one is ours! i am so excited!
there it is!
cute!! travis found this place and booked it for us. he is pretty good at knowing exactly what i will love. 

we get our tickets for rock city and stop for lunch on the way. we crack lots of lame jokes about how we hope the bbq isn't made of chopped up people. (we love sweeney todd) 

yum! it was really delicious!

Cute rock city sign! I was hoping they would have some stuff with that cute bird on it in the gift shop. they didn't. It was all lame. Such a bummer.

we drive up look out mountain and get into rock city! i've been wanting to come here really bad for over a year. we take the enchanted trail through the needle's eye first. so fun. 

the swing along bridge! not as scary as i thought it would be.

on a clear day you can see seven states, and the smokey mountains. it was overcast though. 

the view was still great. 

here we are at the top of lover's leap!
choices, choices. hmmmm that's easy. i can't wait for fairyland caverns!!
fat man's squeeze!
another view of lover's leap.
cute little rainbow corridor! here is the hall of the mountain king. i love how majestic that name sounds.
yes!! the part i've been waiting for! so basically fairyland caverns is a long cave with creepy black light gnomes and fairytale scenes. it's so scary!

so hard to get pictures! these are probably half life sized. and you look through weird little black light frames. like a nightmare! if you use your flash you can see all kinds of trash and cigarette butts. 

the scariest part is the nursery rhyme room, because it's really big and there is a creepy tape playing of kids singing. oooo i loved it!

goodbye gnomes! the weirdest thing was there was NO ONE in the cave with us. and there were tons of people at rock city. it made it even creepier. 

i wanted a tiny rock city bird house, but they only had this big size! so dumb. i finally found a little one the next day in a random western shop. actually, the souvenir shops were all disappointing. and i love cheesy stuff. 

we bought our over priced picture from the front of the trail, since it was a special occasion. and it turned out really cute. it started pouring down rain as soon as we were done with the trail, which is lucky for us!

now we're driving around the mountain looking for ruby falls!
there it is! horray! i had been here in the eighth grade and kind of remembered liking it.
travis over 250 feet below the earth! by the time you get to the falls you are over 1000 feet below the mountain.
mirror lake.

the cave was pretty. but i was pissed off for most of the tour. we were near the back of the group and the lady in front of us was stopping to take a million pictures so we always got far behind and couldn't hear the guide at all. i wanted to punch the lady in the face! she was taking tons of pictures with a crappy camera with her flash one so they weren't even going to turn out well! but soon we were at the falls! you walk in, in pitch black, and then they light it up!

so beautiful!!

we headed back to the hotel to get ready to go out to dinner. we wanted to eat somewhere fancy. but we forgot it was memorial day, and by 7:30 almost every place was closed and no one was out! dang!

we ended up at a place called mudpies on the river front. i had a stuffed potato with cheese, bacon, and scallions. it was really really good! we were the only ones in the restaurant. it was so weird. 

we got ice cream at a place called clumpies right down the street. i got pistachio an it was amazing. travis got banana cream. 

we walked down to the riverfront through the park and it was so romantic! there was heat lightening in the sky and a guy on the walking bridge was playing saxophone. which was carrying nicely down to the river. 

we walked halfway over the pedestrian bridge and i took heart pictures of the light in honor of our anniversary. we smooched on the bridge then headed back to the bridge when it started to rain.
it was pouring when we got back to the hotel. it sounded awesome on the train car roof!