We’ve looked at treehouses in various areas and thought about staying in one. We’ve looked at some near where our nephew lives in Tennessee, but the ones we came across while scrolling on social media were never really, really convenient. We’ve looked at some that are kind of local to our area for sort of a staycation, but never could find time to make plans to stay local. So finally for my birthday Jeff made us a reservation at the treehouses at Ruby Falls in Chattanooga. They have 3 available, we stayed in the Redbud. We like that it is at the bottom of Lookout Mountain and convenient to everything. There is no TV, so if you want to “unplug” then this is the place to be all in nature. They do have Wi-Fi, but not TVs.
Since it is a pretty quick trip from home we decided to go up on Friday night after work. Jeff looked for dinner places around Fort Payne that wasn’t necessarily your standard fast food and came across Vintage 1889. It is a restaurant attached to an old hosiery mill building. There are bicycles attached to the ceiling and an old firetruck that is visible from outside and inside. On the inside it is used as the stage for local entertainment. The entertainment on this Friday night was “Alabama Annie”. I think she said that she was from just up the road in Atalla, so a local. She has a soulful voice.
I felt that when we arrived we struck out against the locals. There are no signs to seat yourself or to wait to be seated. So we stood for a couple of minutes by the door and no one ever came, so we walked to a bar in the next room to be told to have a seat wherever. So we go back to the dining room and end up taking a seat by the door. The bartender finally brought us menus.
We started with an appetizer of sweet potato fries. The menu described them as crispy outside with soft centers tossed with fresh rosemary and garlic salt. What it doesn’t say is that they come with a side of caramel sauce. They were delicious! They came out hot. I’ve found that with most sweet potato fries it’s hard to get the inside hot without burning the outside. These were perfect.
I had one of the signature dishes the Vintage 1889 Chicken. It is a marinated chicken breast smothered in a house balsamic bbq sauce, shredded cheese and bacon with diced tamato. I had a side of the pasta salad. The chicken was really good, but the pasta salad didn’t have much flavor. Jeff went with the Goat Cheese Pesto Burger. He said that it was one of the best he’s had. It is described as a lean ground beef patty served on pretzel bun with goat cheese crumbles, house pesto and of course he had them to leave off the spring mix, tomato, onion and pickle and he got a side of fries.
We arrived at the cabin just around 9:15, the sun had just sat so we got to experience the lighted path. We would have preferred to arrive just before sunset, but that didn’t happen this trip. There is designated parking for the treehouses. We were able to locate it easily even in the dark. We get parked and they have small wagons to use to make you trek easier. We load up the wagon and take the path that starts out concrete but turns to gravel to our treehouse. Everything was well lit with the string lights everywhere. We get inside and immediately start closing the shades. Most of the lower windows have roller shades, the higher ones don’t have shades. They have old quilts on the windows as curtains. We felt like it was just so many windows and way too open for night time. I mean a bear could have been peeking in at us. LOL!
We check out the cabin and in the bathroom there are 2 buttons on the light switch. We found that 1 was the light and fan and the other was for a heater. Well I throw the breaker first time we turned it on. We could not find a breaker box anywhere. Jeff ends up calling the rental company before they close for the night and she talked us to the breaker box which is in the hallway covered by a picture. We flip the breaker back on and we are good for the weekend. Then we are able to get settled in. We slept in the loft on Friday night. The views of the river and downtown were beautiful from the bed which looked just over the trees in front of the tree house.
Saturday morning we got up and drove to Chickamauga, GA to have breakfast at Greg’s Restaurant. It is a place that we found several years ago when we took the scenic route to Chattanooga. It was delicious as always!
We then rode back to Chattanooga and started our day visiting Vinterest Southside in Chattanooga. It is a really cute booth style antique store. While walking around the store we found a sign for a sister store Vinterest Hixson. So when we finished we drove thru Signal Mountain where we saw a flying saucer-spaceship shaped house. We came upon it and didn’t have cameras ready. We didn’t go back down the mountain the same way so we don’t have a picture, but I found one on the internet to share here. Maybe we’ll go back another time to take our own picture. We get up to the top of Signal Mountain and drive thru the town, but don’t see anywhere that piqued our interest that we wanted to check out. So we pulled into a parking lot and looked for directions to get the Hixson so we could visit the other Vinterest store. The map says that the quickest way had the most turns. It takes us on the curviest switchback route we’ve ever been on. We didn’t realize what we were in for. We get to the top of the route and there is a sign that no trucks with trailers are allowed and something else. I asked Jeff what kind of road were we about to down. Well let me just say that in the first switchback I had to back up because I didn’t make the turn wide enough and I was holding up traffic.
We ventured on to Hixson and then realized that we had been to that area before to see a football game that our nephews team was playing.
We get to the next Vinterest and they are much the same as the other one with the setup. We ended up talking to the workers when they asked if we had been in before. They then recommended the one downtown. We told them we had already been there this morning and that is where we saw the sign for this one.
After we left there we decided it was time for lunch. So we went to a restaurant that had been recommended to Jeff. Goodfella’s pizza in Chattanooga. They have gigantic slices of pizza. I went with a slice with tomatoes and Jeff had cheese. We both got the meal which came with a breadstick and a drink. The breadstick was also huge. After lunch we walked to Clumpie’s on Market Street for dessert. I went with mint chocolate chunk, it is always a good choice and Jeff had chocolate, chocolate chunk. Of the 2 mine was the best!
From there we went back to the room and just hung out for the rest of the day. We had brought some small microwave meals so that is what we opted for dinner since we had 2 big meals out. We looked for something close by, but nothing caught our attention so we just stayed in. We did throw a log in the fire pit and have some smores before we got ate up by the mosquitos and had to go in. (Note to self: next time take bug spray.) We decided that we were going to sleep downstairs, so we folded out the couch bed. Let me just say if you have one then you need to look for a better mattress. The one that they had on this bed was so comfy! You didn’t feel every rod in the bed. It was so comfortable and we didn’t have to climb back up that ladder.
On Sunday morning we just ate a protein bar for breakfast and then ventured out for the Chattanooga Market. We walked around but only ended up buying a lemonade. For lunch we went to one of our favorite restaurants in the area, Taco Mamacita. We then moved over to the parking area under the bridge and went in several stores and of course we ended our trip with one last stop at Clumpie’s before we left the area. I went with the peach sorbet, it had a lot of peaches in it and Jeff with with a special flavor called Parent Trap. It was peanut butter ice cream with peanut butter covered Oreo pieces. Jeff’s was the best of the 2 this time. I don’t normally go for a sorbet, but it was the only seasonal flavor that I wanted to try. We’ve tried most of the others in the past.
Then it was time to head back home. It was a great birthday celebration!