The drive to wrap yourself in this enchantment involves a mountain road winding 3.2 miles from a Chattanooga, Tennessee neighborhood named St. Elmo.
Rock City Gardens on top of Lookout Mountain is where the enchantment unfolds abundantly among 14 acres of paths and trails connecting flowers and native plants, giant boulders and rocky topography, waterfalls, bridges and stone overlooks.
Caverns too with lots of dioramas of Mother Goose stories. The surrounding community is called Fairyland on surveyor’s maps, and in casual chats.
SheBuysTravel Tip: Refresh your memory of Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, Jack Be Nimble and all the other stories before you go. It’s fun to spout them out loud when you spot them on the rocks. Sort of wondering: Do kids still read fairy tales?
Here’s the way to maximize the enchantment of a Rock City Gardens vacation:
· Overnight at the very-close Chanticleer Inn; two nights is even better
· Hike some trails extending off that 3.2 mile mountain road
· Ride the Incline Railway up and back
· See what a national military park offers beyond the battle history
· Descend into the Ruby Falls ancient cave system
· Move to Bluff View Arts District to explore Chattanooga, the city on the Tennessee River
Are you ready to explore more unique destinations? Let us inspire you!
First, the Gardens
Rock City Gardens is no ordinary walk through the woods. The first visionary unspooled skeins of string to lay the paths. That was Frieda Carter in 1932.
Today, her great-great grandson Doug Chapman says the “enchantment still resonates” as he guides the company’s continuous mission to make memories worth repeating.
Ninety-three years and four generations of a family sharing awe and wonder along a trail 4,100 feet long.
SheBuysTravel Tip: Ignore the suggested 90-minutes to two hour visit time. Intend to stay. There are rewards for just pausing, and breathing. Sit on a bench (they’re numerous) and look every direction because you would have missed a detailed ground-level rock carving walking by. Extra magic seems to be in places small and low, around a curve, behind a boulder and beside a bridge.
Rock City Gardens has so many nooks and crannies, and personalities, that studying the map can get in the way of enchantment. Immersing is better, with no need to rush to departure.
A long, leisurely lunch helps make more gazing possible. Several food options are inside the Gardens. Café 7 also ties in the lookout above the 100-foot-waterfall to see seven states.
The menu reflects the states. Alabama fried catfish tacos, Georgia peach cobbler, North Carolina barbecue and collards, Kentucky hot brown sandwich, Tennessee air fried apple pie, South Carolina shrimp and grits and Virginia beef brisket with mashed potatoes.
Wines and craft beer available too—-and lots of places to sit and stare. There was live music the day I lunched at Café 7.
SheBuysTravelTip: Tuck a few quarters in your pocket to use the long-distance viewfinder. Quarters will be handy again on the top of the Incline Railway.
Rock City Gardens has so many personalities. That’s another reason to go slow, and absorb.
Liike crossing bridges over the same valley at least twice. Why? Because one swings and other’s stationary rock so the experience is vastly different.
Like turning sideways even if you’re skinny just to fit through a rock passageway.
Or wondering if you should enter a bejeweled red door not knowing what’s on the other side.
It’s not simply that this place is enchanting—but more it’s a place to feel enchantment. To allow the chance to notice feelings of awe and wonder. That’s what guides business decisions too, Chapman said.
“The gardens are naturally intentional, and intentionally natural, says gardens manager Lori Martinez.
That means she and her crew are “supporting the circle of life” always expanding native plantings to assure more biodiversity
SheBuysTravel Tip: If mobility is important, ask at the ticket gate which way to go because parts are not accessible unless walking. The shorter path does reach Café 7 and theseven-states overlook.
Original art appears throughout Rock City Gardens—intentionally commissioned and just as important as fantasy, sustainability and biodiversity. Mother Goose and her dozens of nursery rhyme characters are here too, covering a mountain inside a cavern.
Marveling with long-ago memories and reciting the rhymes came at the end of the Enchanted Trail for me, but studying the map could get you there sooner.
See Rock City Barns
Barn roofs throughout America declared “See Rock City” for decades and today perhaps 50 of them remain.
The founding family in its fourth generation is actively helping to preserve those.
SheBuysTravel will keep an eye on the anticipated publication of a book in 2025 about those barns and their communities which is in development by the writer/editor/photographer team Judy and Len Garrison.
Chanticleer Inn at Rock City Gardens
How good it is to see the day’s destination from your lodging patio! The 16 cottages—mostly stone—of Chanticleer Inn Bed & Breakfast provide that easy stroll to Rock City Gardens.
Some will be happy a Starbuck’s is on the way. Some will be unhappy children under age 12 are not allowed.
Built in 1927, the Inn also has one large cottage with four bedrooms. Single-room cottages have private entrances, sitting areas, and patios able to hold a chair or two. Multiple seating is available on the stone patio outside the dining room.
That dining room is led by chef Jeffrey Walker with deep experience, including Glacier and Everglades national parks, and a love of locally sourced ingredients and seasonality.
Expect hot breakfasts artistically plated, and interesting afternoon snacks and tea.
The Inn draws its name from the Geoffrey Chaucer tale “Chanticleer and the Fox” available for reading (re-reading?) in the living room. Numerous roosters appear throughout the buildings and grounds.
“In those days,” the story goes, “I’m told beasts and birds could talk and sing.”
A fire pit and swimming pool are on the grounds.
SheBuysTravel Tip: Three rooms have walk-in showers so ask ahead if that matters. Most have a mini frig and fireplace.
Trails Nearby
Guild Trail is a groomed path with a parking lot that holds 10 cars off Ochs Highway (58) connecting St. Elmo and the top of Lookout Mountain, right to the intersection with the Chanticleer Inn.
The trailhead is wide, and the trail accommodates motorized wheelchairs.
Keep dogs on a leash.
Looking up as the Incline Railway goes overhead is a connection for a later (or previous!) steep ride. Whiteside is a trail extending from Guild.
Names can be fun to know: Jo Conn Guild and Linn White were the civil engineers who designed the Incline Railway, and the Whiteside family were the funders in 1895. Learned that on signage at the Railway after hiking the trail—bordered by massive boulders speaking volumes about glacial activity eons ago, and wonderful trees, shrubs and native grasses and flowers.
Incline Railway
Gulp and swallow hard if looking down into steep places unsettles you. Or just relish the trip UP on the Incline Railway and look to the side on the descent.
That side looking is a good way to connect again to the Guild Trail.
This is a round-trip experience on Lookout Mountain unless you arrange a car on one end.
The benefits of round trip on the Railway are many including lunch or dinner in St. Elmo and ice cream at Clumpie’s. The ticket booth and spacious parking lot are in St. Elmo.
Grand views at the top, where snacks, drinks, pizza and hot dogs can be purchased.
SheBuysTravel Tip: Allow plenty of time to detour from the top. Walk three blocks to Point Park for more views, lots of Civil War info, and a National Park Service visitor center. That’s free and admission to Point Park is $10 or free age 15 and younger.
Point Park is a walking place with more grand views, and benches to perch and gaze 100 miles on a clear day. An hour or two could easily be spent here.
Note: the Chickamauga and Chattanooga Battlefield is a 25-minute drive from Point Park and involves a seven-mile driving tour, self-guided through a cell phone.
Ruby Falls
Ruby Falls offers two ways to experience Lookout Mountain: inside and out.
Take the elevator down 260 feet to walk around inside the mountain. The guided tour makes geology feel familiar, and sets off lots of “wow” and “amazing” comments and feelings.
Even though the waterfall — considered the tallest underground in America open to the public – might be the headliner, every formation created over eons of time is astonishing.
Think Ice Age fossils, and shapes formed one drip at a time. The cave is thought to be 30 million years old.
I could have happily lingered longer than the 75-minute tour – but not the 17 hours Leo Lambert spent after discovering the cave by accident in 1928, and needing to find a way out, or back up in the dark crawl space.
A modern touch: handrails some places along the path where the temperature is always 60 degrees.
On top, zipline over the trees or look long distances to the Cumberland Plateau.
SheBuysTravel Tip: Head to the viewfinder on top, near the 1929 limestone castle building where special events are held. Bonus for colorblind visitors: Ruby Falls is one of 15 places where Tennessee installed EnChroma lenses to alleviate red-green colorblindness!
Bluff View Arts District, Chattanooga
One way to frame a visit to Chattanooga is through the Bluff View Arts District.
Sleep. Eat. See art—lots of it. Overlook the Tennessee River. This district is, after all, on the bluff!
Three historic inns under one innkeeper provide 14 guestrooms and two apartment-size suites. They’re in walking distance of one another, and of Tony’s Pasta Shop & Trattoria for lunch and dinner and Rembrandt’s Coffee House for breakfast, fresh-baked breads and pastries and house-roasted brews.
Certified organic and fair trade coffees available; roasting happens near the Bluff View bocce court.
Chattanooga’s Hunter Museum of American Art is in the District.
Among the Hunter’s special features are portable gallery stools! Help yourself because they’re readily available on hooks in the galleries. Wheelchairs and strollers are available too.
“Access for all” is a museum mission; EBT cards from all states are welcomed for free admission with up to four adults. Everybody age 17 and younger always enters for free.
SheBuysTravel Tip: Ask the innkeeper to make dinner reservations at Tony’s. The restaurant is always busy and does not accept reservations directly from diners. My black pepper linguine with wild mushroom tomato sauce and roasted garlic was so good I went back for lunch the next day. That was grilled veggie salad of squash, asparagus, red onion, roasted bell pepper on mixed greens topped with feta cheese, tarragon and Kalmata olives.
The Bluff View Arts District is walkable day and night. The Sculpture Garden closes before dark so utilize the seating areas in daylight to gaze at the original art as well as the Tennessee River.
River Gallery is an inside experience of fine works by artists throughout the nation. It’s a good plan to complement looking at all that art by strolling into the alleyways and courtyards that also distinguish the District.
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