If you’ve been around for awhile you know that we visit Chattanooga quite often. We hardly ever do the same things other than get ice cream at Clumpie’s LOL! There is so much to do and explore there. We did a quick weekend trip in May. We went on Friday night after work and came home Sunday afternoon. We crammed in a bunch of new adventures and a couple that we’ve done before.
Friday night we stopped in Fort Payne, AL and had dinner at Vintage 1889. We’ve eaten here one other time on a trip to Chattanooga. This trip the food was not as good as we remembered. They have live entertainment and this time it was Lee Burt and Brant Noojin. They did a lot of cover songs and had some of the people in the restaurant to get on stage with them and sing. We tried to sit inside, but the only table was next to the stage and it was loud, so we ended up sitting on the patio which was just a few feet away from the first table. They have garage like doors between the patio and restaurant and had them open. The lady that waited on us told someone else that she only works one day a week. Service was slow, food coming out of the kitchen was slow. We ended up spending longer here than we had hoped we would.
We started with the same appetizer we had the last time and it was the sweet potato fries that comes with a side of caramel sauce. The fries were good, but they didn’t give us enough of the sauce. Jeff had the same thing as the last trip the goat cheese pesto burger and mac & cheese. He asked for it to be cooked medium and it came out really well done and was a little tough. I had the salad sampler. It was a flatbread tomato pie, a serving of chicken salad and a house side salad. It was all good, but I think I was expecting more of a sliced tomato pie than a flatbread. It was basically just a pizza. There is a restaurant close to that area that actually does a tomato pie.
We headed on towards Chattanooga. We stayed in the St. Elmo area of town in an old store that has been converted into a cute one bedroom loft style apartment. When we got there our door code wouldn’t work and we ended up locking the keypad. We had to call them and they had to reset it. We finally got it and was able to get settled. As we were settling in for the night we had our medicine and snacks on the desk. I went to get my medicine and end up kicking the leg of the chair and hurt one of my toes, probably broke it as it stayed sore for over a week.
Saturday we decided to do some thrifting. We started at a Goodwill store in East Ridge. The first one we mapped to ended up only being a drop off location. We found an actual store nearby in what looked like an old grocery store. Leaving this area we didn’t go back to the interstate and took a route where we ended up going through the longest tunnel ever. And I couldn’t find my phone in the dark to take a picture. I think we went through the side of a mountain.
We then went to Edith’s Emporium and the Electric Crocodile Southside location where we saw the cutest kitten. This location just opened on May 2 and is next door to the Chattanooga Market.
Next up was lunch reservations at Riverdance which was about 25 minutes west of Chattanooga in Guild, TN. It is perched up high on the mountain top overlooking Nickajack Lake. We probably didn’t need reservations for brunch, but we didn’t know so we made them anyway. Also it is in the central time zone and Chattanooga is in the Eastern time zone, so we really had to think about that when we realized it. They probably have people mix it up all the time when visiting both areas.
There are beautiful breathtaking views from the restaurant inside and out. The food was good, we had seen mixed reviews but our brunch was really good. Jeff went with biscuits and gravy which came with eggs and fried potates. I had the Brunch burger with a salad and twice baked potato. The manager offered us dessert since it was our first visit, but we were so full that we passed on dessert. We also knew that we were going to be visiting Clumpie’s, I mean this is Chattanooga right.
After lunch we took the scenic route back to Chattanooga and by the time we got back we decided we’d stop in at Clumpie’s Northshore. I had strawberry pretzel pie and Jeff had chocolate PB cookies. These are both from the seasonal menu.
We then continued our thrifting and went to the other Electric Crocodile location. Then we went to Infinity Flux Comics and then to HTeaO and Vinterest in the Hixson area.
We went back to the room to rest and we went into St. Elmo and had pizza at Mr. T’s pizza and ice cream. It is a popular place in St. Elmo and was really busy.
Sunday we got up to hundreds of bicycles riding past. We looked and found that the IronMan was going on. When we left we went out a back way so that we wouldn’t be in the middle of everything trying to get through St. Elmo. We left right at check out time and when we got to the end of the street and I realized that I had left my wedding rings on the top of the microwave. So we had to turnaround and head back. I had taken them off to wash up the few dishes that we had used. Thank goodness they had not yet changed to door code. I had been diligent about trying to make sure we didn’t leave anything because all of our information said that they would not mail anything that was left. Thanks goodness I realized while we were still close.
After that fiasco was over we headed towards the Chattanooga Market. We went back to the Electric Crocodile as we had to cut our visit short on Saturday to make our lunch reservation time. Then we looked around the market. They were doing an ice cream social with Clumpie’s to benefit the Down Syndrome Community of Chattanooga. They were serving 4 flavors and asking you to vote for your favorite. It was cookie dough, cookies & cream, chocolate with yellow cake and birthday cake. We ended up just making a donation as we wanted to eat lunch first. We looked at the vendors at the market and had thought about grabbing lunch, but there wasn’t any available seating. So we started searching Yelp and ended up going to Nic & Norman’s at the Chattanooga Choo Choo. They were founded by Norman Reedus and Greg Nicotero from the Walking Dead. There is memorabilia around the restaurant from the show The food was good. I had steak medallions with green beans and sweet potato fries. Jeff had the frito chili smashburger with gouda grits.
We stopped in at the Clumpie’s on Market Street for one last scoop before heading home. Jeff had a mint chocolate chip shake and I had a scoop of orange creamsicle.
Our weekend was great. We did however get a speeding ticket in the mail a couple weeks later for going 42 in a 35. It was one of those camera ones. Don’t know who was driving at the time. I do remember passing the cameras somewhere around Hixson. They didn’t even look like real cameras. We talked about how they probably weren’t. Oh well!
Until next time Chattanooga, but we’ll be avoiding that camera area!!!!