Best Things to do in Chattanooga with Kids

We’ve had some crazy times here in the last year!!  Like many, we’ve had to cancel quite a few trips.  We were able to plan a last minute getaway to Chattanooga, TN which is a reasonable drive from the New Orleans area.  Reasonable, is of course relative; but for us that’s about 7.5 hours (before 56467654545345 stops with 3 little ones 🤣).  One of the things Chance & I miss most about living in Atlanta – aside from our friends – is the proximity to some great vacation spots!

We really needed this vacation!  Like, good for the soul ya know?!?  We were used to traveling at least once per quarter minimum, so 9 months seemed like forever to us!  It was a much needed change-of-pace.  We still got quality family time but doing activities that were different for us!  Poor Hunter has been asking constantly to get on a plane and go to the hotel. We had to find a way to prepare him for the fact that we would not be at a hotel and there would be no lobby nor elevator rides. Chance proudly told him we’d be staying in a ‘house hotel.’ Hunter seemed to accept it, so we ran with that story LOL

The weather and scenery were beautiful in Chattanooga.  I was a little bummed that we missed the leaves changing, but I wasn’t expecting that so it wasn’t a big deal.  We lucked out with pretty great weather, & honestly, the boys just love being outside!!  Sticks are life … if you have a boy, you know 😉

I also realized that many families from New Orleans make the longer drive to Gatlinburg, passing up this awesome {closer} spot!  I hope this shines a light on some awesome activities at a closer destination. While we did this trip over the course of a week, Chattanooga is the perfect long weekend destination, too! Don’t think you have to go for a week to make it worth your while!!

Our Stay

My parents joined us for the first few days, so we did more of the touristy activities then.  After they left, we spent time hiking and being outside at a relaxed pace.  One thing I would change is interspersing our activity days with hiking/rest days, since we have little ones!  We jam packed our first day, & it was really too much for the littles.  If it had just been adults (let’s say 10 & up for these purposes), we would have been totally fine!

We stayed in the perfect neighborhood – St. Elmo.  It’s an up-and-coming area in Chattanooga & the perfect location for the majority of activities you’ll want to do.  Our AirBNB was well-stocked & had some kid-friendly items available like a pack-n-play.  We would definitely recommend our AirBNB & the St. Elmo area in general!

It took us pretty much all day to drive up there, but we arrived by dinnertime.  My parents met us at the house with BBQ from Charlie’s BBQ, & it was excellent.  We are limited on BBQ choices down by us, so it’s always a treat to get well-prepared BBQ when traveling.  The brisket was simply amazing.  It was the perfect food to bring home and kick our trip off right.

Special note: Everything we did required a timed ticket due to COVID-19.  Under normal circumstances, this would not be the case.  However, I would still recommend the general flow of our itinerary even in non-COVID times.

Rock City

The next day was our busiest!  We started the morning off at Rock City.  This drive was less than 10 minutes from the St. Elmo area.  It was a great start to the day & a much needed energy release for the big boys!  They were starting to decorate for Christmas, but the lights display didn’t actually start until after Thanksgiving.  I’m sad we missed it; it looked pretty awesome from what we could see & I can totally see us going back near Christmas time.  

I think Rock City was probably our favorite attraction of the day!  It was a beautiful day to be outside, & the views were incredible.  The rock formations were crazy cool to look at, & it’s a great place to not have to worry about being super strict with the kids. They can sort of just lead at their own pace.  I will say it’s important to note that some of the passageways are REALLY narrow.  I’m a small person, so when I feel claustrophobic, it’s pretty bad.  Once you got to the overlook, they had some great rocking chairs & a beautiful waterfall.  None of the restaurants were open when we were there, but the Starbucks across the street was.  Rock City has ample free parking just outside the gates.  I would recommend about 2-3 hours to fully enjoy this & take time to just appreciate the sights!

Lookout Mountain

After Rock City, we grabbed a quick lunch before heading to the Lookout Mountain Incline Railway lower station. Important: If you have a timed ticket, the time on your ticket is your arrival time there, NOT your trolley’s departure time.  We had some extra time to keep the kids entertained because of this.

Lookout Mountain was a bit underwhelming in my opinion, especially with little kids in tow.  The trolley ride was the most exciting part and provided some good sights; but basically you rode up, looked around at the top, could buy something in the gift shop & ride back down.  For me, the views from the top weren’t different enough from the views at Rock City to truly make it worth it.  Pre-COVID, you could purchase it as a bundle & that might be worth it; but buying separately doesn’t make me want to do it again (I’d totally do Rock City again if we go back).  This is a good attraction if you’re not able to walk far distances like you need to at Rock City but still want some amazing views!  There is a paid parking lot right next to the lower station.  You could do this in about an hour but you’re beholden to the trolley schedules up & down.  They run every 15-20 minutes or so.  If you had to leave something out, this would be it IMO.

Ruby Falls

A short drive and we were at our last attraction for the day.  Ruby Falls was pretty incredible & beautifully decorated for Christmas already.  The only reason Rock City beat out Ruby Falls is because with little kids, Rock City is MUCH easier for them to walk by themselves.  If it’s just adults, Ruby Falls wins out!  An elevator brings you down to the caves at a super fast speed.  You have a guide that brings you through the cave to get to the Falls.  They give you historical details throughout the tour, & it’s just something so neat to see that you can’t experience elsewhere.  We got stuck carrying kids most of the time & were super thankful my parents were with us.  The kids were totally wiped by this point, and Chance & I were well on our way.  There are no strollers or anything like that allowed, so we thought it would be smart to bring our hiking carrier.  It was smart, but it didn’t fit 🤣 mostly because Chance is so tall but still.  I did have Beckett in our Lillebaby & that was fine.  But otherwise we got stuck all rotating carrying tired kids in our tired arms. 🙈 This tour was about an hour of actually being down in the caves, but I would allow a solid 90 minutes altogether from checking in to being back out of the elevator. Do make sure to wear water resistant shoes with good tracking. There are plenty of areas with water on the floor & it can get slippery!

Zoo

The next day was slightly more relaxed.  We visited the Chattanooga Zoo in the morning, which again, wasn’t too far from the St. Elmo neighborhood.  Anytime we are on vacation, we have to visit the local zoo if there is one.  Doesn’t matter if it’s big or small, cheap or expensive, basic or advanced – Hunter loves the zoo & we always go.  This zoo was slightly smaller, & it was actually attached to UT Chattanooga.  It looked like many of the zookeepers were students which is a pretty smart setup.  We were able to successfully walk through the whole zoo at a relatively slow pace and still complete it in just under 2 hours.  One of the very first things you see when you walk through the gates is a camel that you can ride (for an additional fee).  Hunter (who is already getting smarter than I am) informed us that this was a dromedary camel.  A random stranger, and then Chance, did confirm this was correct, & I was just thinking to myself “I didn’t even know such a camel existed.”  I thought they did an excellent job of really having toddler friendly viewing windows.  Many times we are holding the boys up to be able to see things, & we really didn’t have to do that at all here.  That’s a #parentwin. 

They had some really unique animals like red pandas, snow leopards, chimpanzees, and jaguars.  We also got to feed a giraffe which was pretty amazing!!  They only do this at certain times on certain days, but it’s absolutely worth it if you happen to be there at the right time.  They just built a new giraffe enclosure which includes an elevated platform and allows them to have this new giraffe feeding.  They also have a cute little train that you can ride around the zoo for an additional fee.  They have a very large parking lot with free parking.  There is also a playground right next to it which appeared to be free and open to the public.  We didn’t have time to check it out, but it would be very easy to walk right over.  Again, many of the normal eating spots were closed right now within attractions due to the coronavirus.  I also found that their gift shop was well-stocked with things like sunscreen, diapers/wipes, ponchos etc.

Railroad Museum

From there, we grabbed some lunch & then drove out to the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum.  This was actually better than I expected!  There were tons of different train styles that you walked through to get to the main building.  We boarded our train car and were off on our one hour journey pretty quickly.  They have tons of different rides with different lengths of time, but the one hour was perfect for our little crew 😀  About halfway through the ride, the train came to the depot at the end of the track, and they did a turntable demonstration to turn the main car around.  This was incredibly interesting to watch & even crazier to think that human beings used to push this table instead of the electricity used today.  The train was pushed back to the station instead of being pulled.  I never knew this was how trains operated way back when.  Chance did, in case you were wondering 😉 The boys enjoy all things train, and there was plenty of knowledge being shared for the adults in the group. We lucked out with a beautiful day, & it was just such a neat experience.  The prices were very reasonable for the experience in my opinion.  The drive out was around 20-25 minutes for us.  You don’t need too much time on the front or back end of this one; basically just whatever your ride time is.  We had two crashed little boys (probably three but Beckett just blends in lol) in the back of our car this day!

Aquarium

Sunday was our downtown day.  We started off at the aquarium and moved on to the children’s museum after lunch.  The Tennessee Aquarium is definitely one worth visiting.  If you’ve had the chance to read our other travel posts, you know we really don’t go anywhere without hitting up the local zoo and aquarium.  This means we have lots of comparisons 🤣 The aquarium is divided into two buildings that are completely separate.  I don’t know if I really like this because if it’s raining or something, you still have to get between them, but it does make for a nice area to take a break right there along the river.  Speaking of the river, the views of the river from the aquarium are stunning.  You start both buildings at the top and work your way down & at the top of each you are greeted with windows to look out.  TALK MORE ABOUT AQU

There are plenty of parking lots near the aquarium.  We didn’t find any that were free, but most were reasonably priced (under $10; just avoid the hotel garages and such).  We were able to park in the aquarium’s lot, since our tickets were the first entry of the day.  It actually looked like it had decent availability throughout the day.  This lot was on the same side of the aquarium as the children’s museum so it was strategic for us because we didn’t want to have to move the car or pay again.  

Creative Discovery Museum

After walking to lunch, we made a quick pit stop at the car to regroup on our way to the Creative Discovery Museum.  This children’s museum wasn’t bad by any means, but I feel like I had higher expectations.  Maybe just compared to some of the other children’s museums we’ve been to or something, but if I had to pick something other than the Incline Railway to leave out of our trip, it would probably be this.  Of course, it is still a great activity and there are different areas for the kiddos to enjoy.  You have a water area, a dinosaur dig, a music area, STEM area, art area and transportation area to name a few!  It’s also a part of the ACM Reciprocal Network which allowed us to receive half off our admission.  A quick 8 minute drive back to the AirBNB and our touristy weekend had come to a close.

The next few days, we enjoyed a much slower pace!  We hung out at our AirBNB, hiked and visited with our best friends who drove up from Huntsville to spend a day with us!  Chance is going to cover all of our hikes and hikes we didn’t get to in another post.  He’s an ex-eagle scout and always picks great hikes for us to do, especially since we have to be careful and make sure they’re toddler and baby carrier friendly! There’s still more to cover & some things we didn’t get to do that I want to mention, but I’ll save that for a follow up post another day!

If we were to turn this into the perfect family weekend trip to Chattanooga, we’d visit Rock City & Ruby Falls, the Aquarium & take a train ride and go hiking. I think those were definitely the top contenders of this vacation :). We’d do the hiking in between the other 2 days of activities to change it up.

We will definitely be heading back to Chattanooga!  Since it’s one of the few locations we can drive to, that makes it even more appealing to us.  We’ll definitely head back in late Spring/early summer to enjoy more of the outdoor hiking and other activities.  I think it would be beautiful at Christmas time, too.  And I certainly can’t wait for the boys to be old enough to go white water rafting, horseback riding, zip lining etc!!

COVID-19: All places we visited required the adults to wear masks.  We encouraged the boys to wear their masks as much as possible, too. If you see photos of us not wearing masks, we just pulled them down for the pictures while standing still & then pulled them back up 🙂  We felt safe & did our part in practicing safe social distancing while supporting the tourism industry!