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From legendary attractions such as Ruby Falls and Rock City to best-kept secrets such as the African American Museum and Bessie Smith Performance Hall, the Chattanooga area has loads of entertainment options for families hitting the road this season.

Family Fun
The Tennessee Aquarium, perhaps Chattanooga’s most famous attraction, is a great place to cool off on a hot summer day. The aquarium lets you come face to face with 10-foot sharks, graceful stingrays, seahorses and 12,000 other mysterious creatures, including fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds and butterflies. It also features a six-story IMAX 3-D theater that makes you feel like you’re part of the undersea action – not just watching it.

Equally intriguing for the younger set is the Creative Discovery Museum, filled with hands-on learning exhibits and demon­strations. Kids can dig for dinosaur bones, build robots, see how bees make honey and pilot a riverboat, among other activities.

For outdoor thrills, Lake Winnepesaukah Amusement Park, known locally as Lake Winnie, offers miniature golf, 23 major rides, 10 kiddie rides, paddleboats, a miniature train and a sky ride.

Historical Interests
Much has changed since Union and Confederate forces fought for control of Chattanooga in 1863, but the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park has remained much the same. Created in 1890 to preserve and commemorate local battlefields, the national park contains monuments, trails, a visitor center, bookstore and a seven-mile auto tour.

Automotive buffs feel right at home at the International Towing & Recovery Hall of Fame and Museum, where they can see restored antique wreckers and equipment, as well as a changing collection of tow trucks that date from the earliest days of the automobile.

Other Chattanooga museums include the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum, Chattanooga Regional History Museum and the African American Museum.

Good Eats
The restaurants in the Chattanooga area make it a foodie’s paradise.

The English Rose Tea Room is the perfect place for a light lunch with an English flair. Located in the historic Grand Hotel across from the Chattanooga Choo-Choo, the British tea room serves up teas, finger sandwiches, cheeses, biscuits, home­made soups, desserts and typical English fare such as chicken pies.

If you’ve got pizza on the brain, don’t miss Lupi’s Pizza Pies, where you can take a load off in a comfy booth and feast on made-from-scratch pizzas and calzones with your choice of more than 100 meats, veggies and cheeses.

Tony’s Pasta Shop and Trattoria in the Bluff View Art District is another gem in the restaurant scene, offering a classic Italian menu with house-made pastas, sauces and European-style breads.

Arts/Culture
If you’re passionate about the arts, head for Chattanooga’s Bluff View Art District, a quaint neigh­borhood where you can escape to a bed-and-breakfast inn, saunter through museums and galleries, savor a hand-dipped chocolate truffle, or relax on a bench in the River Gallery Sculpture Garden.

One of the district’s jewels is the Hunter Museum of American Art, which features a renowned permanent collection of art, including paintings, sculptures, drawings and glasswork. Pieces by Andy Warhol, Whitfield Lovell, John Singer Sargent, Asher Durand and Samuel Morse are among the museum’s treasures.

For those more in tune with music than the visual arts, the Chattanooga Symphony & Opera provides a variety of musical productions throughout the year in the magnificent Tivoli Theatre.

Great music can also be found at the annual Riverbend Festival, June 8-16. Held on the banks of the Tennessee River, the nine-day festival features 100 performing artists on six stages.

Agritourism
When it comes to nature’s bounty, Chattanooga’s got the goods.

The Chattanooga Market is a weekly open-air downtown market that offers fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers grown by local farmers every Sunday from the last week in April through the Sunday before Christmas. It’s also a hot spot for live entertainment, handmade pottery, jewelry, candles, textiles, soaps and furniture, and creative cuisine in the Market Café.

Visitors who enjoy the pick-your-own-produce experience can head to Crabtree Farms, a 22-acre urban farm near downtown Chattanooga that grows more than 200 varieties of certified organic crops.

Visitors can learn about sustainable flower and vegetable production; pick strawberries, blueberries and blackberries; and buy farm-fresh meats, eggs, produce and honey from the Farm Stand, open Tuesday through Saturday, May through November. 

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Magazine:
Tennessee Home & Farm, Summer 2010 Edition Edition

Headline:
Choose Chattanooga

Summary:
Fun comes easy in the river town.

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