Chattanooga – Page 3 – Seeing the Scenic City

Alternative coffee options for an alternative way of life

Derek and I love coffee shops. You can read about some of the ones we frequent here.

The one thing I have missed the most during the pandemic is sitting inside a coffee shop. Getting to-go orders, or sitting outside, is just not the same. I miss the cozy ambience of being inside.

The only coffee shop we’ve never stopped going to is Rembrandt’s, because they have a large outdoor patio. I love going to Rembrandt’s, truly, but I ultimately want to rotate with the other places again.

Since the pandemic started, we have found two new coffee places. Except they’re not really places at all, which is best during a pandemic.

(Be) Caffeinated is a drive thru in Red Bank on Dayton Blvd, not far from where we live. It’s been open a little over a year. We had passed it multiple times, but never gave it a second thought. A drive thru is now one of the safest places you can go these days.

Again, as I’ve noted before, I can’t offer any opinions on the coffee. I only get chai lattes. However, at (Be) Caffeinated, Derek has ordered the Hazelnut Bliss as well as the Gig City Mocha. Derek says it is worth noting that their cold brew is strong. So strong that, getting a coffee in the early afternoon kept him up all night! We now know to go here in the morning.

A few months ago, when the Chattanooga Market opened up, we also discovered Spill the Beans, a coffee truck. At Spill the Beans, Derek has ordered the toffee nut cold brew. Spill the Beans’ schedule looks a little different these days, but normally you would find them at some of the bigger events in Chattanooga, as well as sporting events. We always look forward to going to the Market on weekends, and now Spill the Beans is included in that.

Our desire to get coffee and chai on the weekends has not waned despite the pandemic. At least we have these two options, which we will keep in rotation even after the pandemic has ended.

Soldiering on through this pandemic summer

August has been a hard month. The running theme has been depression and anxiety.

Derek goes back to work next week at UTC and I am scared. Yes, everyone will be wearing masks in the classroom, but knowing that he’s going to be around more people worries me.

I’m worried about Derek getting COVID-19 because his immune system isn’t the greatest. If someone else is sick, he usually gets it. He’s had the gamut of illnesses. It should be noted that whenever Derek is sick, I never catch it from him, but COVID-19 feels like a different beast.

I am struggling with work. It was hard to start a job working remotely from home, and to still be stuck at home almost five months later. Currently I’m working through a big project, and there has been a lot of confusion surrounding it. My anxiety is already high from the pandemic, and I’m an anxious person by default. Couple that with the confusion of the project and still working from home, well, let’s just say I’ve been a mess. My confidence and self-esteem are down. I cry a lot and I’m not sleeping well because work follows me into my dreams at night.

And then there is the long lasting cabin fever. We are still doing smaller activities in general. In a sense, one could argue that I have fulfilling weekends. Today I took two separate walks, worked on my scrapbook, read and watched The Sound of Music. But it’s not the weekend I want.

We still go to parks. We’ve walked the Walnut Street Bridge. We still eat at some of our favorite coffee shops and restaurants, or at least the ones that have large enough outdoor seating areas. But the problem is that we’re not doing anything new. My Chattanooga to-do list is stagnant. This is what I was afraid of in March, which feels like a lifetime ago.

The one good thing to come out of staying at home is that I’ve been challenging myself to take more photos with my macro lens. As the seasons progress, there are different things to photograph. I will attach some of my photos below.

I’m counting down the days until September. I want fall to come. I don’t expect anything to automatically change when the days get cooler, but I just need something to feel different — even if it is only the temperature.

The pandemic is not the only thing that has halted our activities. The heat has done that too. The only things we can do safely are outdoor things. Derek doesn’t handle the heat as well as I do. It’s just better to stay inside and stay cool.

When fall comes, there are some things on my to-do list that can be crossed off. I am looking forward to picking apples at Wheeler’s Orchard in Dunlap, Tennessee. We will also go hiking at Cloudland Canyon State Park in Dade County, Georgia.

With September also comes my birthday. We were thinking of making a lunch reservation at The Cookie Jar Café, also in Dunlap. The family owned restaurant has a large porch with seating, and, specifically for the pandemic, they also set up extra picnic tables.

There are plenty of indoor things open now, but do we really want to do any of it? Everyone wearing masks does go a long way in keeping everyone safe, but it’s better to wait it out for now.

Little did we know …

Four years ago today, July 30, we were half way through our cross country move from Wellsboro, Pennsylvania to Houston, Texas. It was a 24 hour, 1,600 mile drive that took three days.

Our second day was a long 900-mile stretch, from Harrisonburg, Virginia to Picayune, Mississippi. Chattanooga is somewhere in the middle.

My parents had been to Chattanooga before. They reenacted the 150th Battle of Chickamauga (we used to be Civil War reenactors) and while there, they took a quick trip up to Chattanooga, to see the National Cemetery. My dad also loves trains and wanted to see the Andrews Raiders monument.

Tennessee was the first new state that we had driven through, so I think that was why I committed that part of the drive to memory, more so than any other sate.

My dad was driving to Houston with us, pulling the U-Haul trailer behind his truck. We were communicating with walkie talkies. As we were driving around Chattanooga on I-24 West, Dad was pointing out landmarks. From the road, we could see the flag pole on the top of the National Cemetery’s hill. Dad also made sure to point out Lookout Mountain, where the Civil War “Battle Above The Clouds” took place.

I specifically remember being in awe driving around Moccasin bend, around the mountain and the Tennessee River.

We took the Lookout Valley exit and stopped at a Subway for lunch. We ate in the parking lot. And then we were on our way, reaching the Georgia line just a few minutes later.

Little did we know that Chattanooga would be come our home three years later!

This past winter, I wrote an article about a new real estate office opening up in Lookout Valley. I drove past that Subway, and it was fun to reminisce. I think it would be fun to go back there and eat lunch again and think about how different things were the last time we ate there.

Here are some photos from that trip:

Rock City

My parents visited us for a long weekend and we did a lot of outdoor activities in an effort to try and stay safe.

Advertisements all across the south say to “See Rock City.” It’s been ingrained in my brain so much that I accidentally call the attraction “See Rock City,” when I’m supposed to drop the See. But now I can say that yes, I have seen it!

Rock City is at the top of Lookout Mountain in Georgia, and it features a 3/4 of a mile trail. The trail meanders through different themed areas featuring gardens and scenic views. You can sort of get a feel for what you are going to experience by looking at the website, but we truly did not know what we were in for until we experienced it ourselves.

Because of the pandemic, and a poorly timed computer update, our experience wasn’t exactly the best, but I can’t see how social distancing at Rock City is even possible. They are offering timed entry every 15 minutes. When I bought the tickets, we were the only four at 8:45. However, there was a computer update which backed up the 8:30, 8:45 and 9 a.m. entries. Even though we went to Rock City on a Friday morning, there were still so many people. At first we tried really hard to keep our distance from others but it was impossible. I wasn’t exactly happy about it, but we eventually just had to let our guard down a little and weave in and out of the other people as best as possible. We wore masks, but hardly anyone else did.

Some of my favorite parts of Rock City were the swinging bridge, the rainbow room and of course the view from Lover’s Leap. There are different shops and restaurants at the beginning of the trail, and some in the middle as well, around Lover’s Leap.

We went on a cloudy morning, and the Saharan dust cloud was approaching, so we did not have the best, clearest views. This is just an excuse to come back, maybe in the fall. Rock City is definitely something I would do again, and my parents agreed. They offer different types of events throughout the year. I am most looking forward to Enchanted Garden of Lights, which is their Christmastime event. You go at night and walk through the trail to see the Christmas lights.

Rock City33 — There were a lot of cute, whimsical doors to walk through, which signified different sections of the trail.

Rock City42 — The swinging bridge. There is an alternative, stone bridge if you are scared!

Rock City57 — We probably did not see all seven states on this cloudy day …

Rock City62 — At the top of Lover’s Leap.

Rock City86 — Posing with Lover’s Leap in the background.

Rock City109 — Fairyland Caverns featured scenes from fairy tales. Here is Little Red Riding Hood.

Rock City114 — Mother Goose Village, featuring scenes from different nursery rhymes.

Rock City72 — Can you make it through “Fat Man’s Squeeze?”

Big Soddy Creek Gulf

I have checked off another hiking trail off my to-do list! Derek and I hiked Big Soddy Creek Gulf in Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee, which is about 20 minutes north of where we live.

We arrived at 9 a.m. to avoid the crowds. We did come across a few people, but the trail was wide, so it was easy to keep our distance. We actually forgot our face masks at home, but this ended up not being an issue, thankfully.

The entire trail is about 5 miles, out and back, but the most popular part is the beginning, 1.25 miles along a flat, gravel road that follows the creek and opens up to swimming holes along the way. We couldn’t have gone further even if we had wanted to, because a wooden bridge was damaged and unusable, perhaps from the storm and tornado we had in April?

The other side of the trail features interesting rock formations and a water fall about a mile in. When we were there it was only a trickle, but I am sure it is gushing after a heavy rain.

The trail also features a lot of picnic tables along the way (we made use of these) and there is signage indicating how far you have walked.

A highlight for me was finding lots of clusters of Mountain Laurel, which is the Pennsylvania state flower. I had lived in Pennsylvania for about 10 years, and yet I had only seen the flower in the wild once.

This is really nice trail, and I might consider coming back in the summer to go swimming. The water is really clear and cold!

We were finished and heading back to the car at about 10:30 a.m., at the same time the trail started to fill up. Hopefully more trails will open in the future, and we can continue to properly social distance by arriving early as we did today.

Fort Wood Historic District

Last weekend Derek and I walked around the Fort Wood Historic District, a neighborhood in Chattanooga.

The neighborhood is right next to the UTC campus and is a couple of blocks wide. Two of the biggest homes are the Mayor’s Mansion Inn, which is a bread and breakfast, and the Patten House, a UTC building that houses the The Southeast Center for Education in the Arts.

“A fortification during the Civil War, Fort Wood was constructed by the Union Army in 1863. The National Park Service placed several war-era cannons in the neighborhood. In the 1880s, the fort and surrounding land was auctioned off. In time, Fort Wood became one of Chattanooga’s finest residential neighborhoods,” Wikipedia says.

We enjoyed walking around a new to us section of the city and mused about what it would be like to live in one of the homes. It was a good way to get outside and still practice social distancing. We did not see many people and those that we did were relaxing on their beautiful front porches.

Fort Wood Historic District0 — The Mayor’s Mansion Inn

Fort Wood Historic District14 — UTC’s Patten House.

Social distancing day…? I’m losing track…

It’s raining today, and I’m thankful for the excuse to be forced to stay inside. Yesterday was a beautiful, sunny day. We’ve had a month’s worth of sunny weekend days, which is a joke when you can’t go anywhere. I’ll bet that once this is all done and over with, it will rain for a month straight.

Toward the end of the week, I started looking up possible parks we could go to. City parks are closed, but I figured that parks not in Chattanooga would still be open. People need to exercise and walk their dogs, so something must be open. This is going against what I said last week, that we would err on the side of caution and assume that we couldn’t travel anywhere for exercise. I learned my lesson. The park that we had in mind, Greenway Farms in Hixon, was closed. I was disappointed.

Derek could tell how upset I was, so he started driving around random streets, pointing out the nice architecture of the houses. Meanwhile, I got a bad anxiety attack. Have you heard stories about people thinking they were having a heart attack, and it turns out it was just an anxiety attack? Well that is what it felt like for me, except I am so used to these attacks that I know what they are. It came on fast and sudden, and it was hard to breathe. My chest hurt. I am a little embarrassed that I had a bad anxiety attack after finding out a park was closed, but this is just what my mental health is like these days.

After I calmed down a bit, I was able to enjoy the drive. We saw some beautiful houses, some with front porch columns and turrets with green ivy climbing on them. It almost made the afternoon feel normal, like old times.

Overall, the day was good. I had ordered photos for scrapbooking, so I got that started yesterday. I will work on that again today. During dinner we watched The Martian, a great isolation themed movie for these times.

Next week I will be at my new job for a month. Time flies even when you’re stuck inside and the days run together. It is the hardest job I have ever trained for. It’s not the work that is hard, it is learning the process in order to do the work. There are a lot of new programs to learn. Everyone apologizes to me because I am having to learn everything remotely, but nothing can be done to change that.

Sleeping is hit or miss too. I have work nightmares almost every night, including the weekends too, which is frustrating. When it’s not a work related nightmare, I still have vivid and weird dreams.

I am experiencing frequent headaches now, and my acne is back in full force, which always happens when I am experiencing high levels of stress.

Earlier this week, to add on top of everyone’s Coronavirus related stress, an EF-3 tornado hit Chattanooga. The tornado hit in the middle of the night, and due to a number of factors, the people had no warning. We were lucky because we were north of the path of the tornado. Our power did go out though, and was out for half of the day. Some people still do not have power.

One theme that I keep seeing throughout all of this is that, yes, we may be stuck inside, but at least we have our TV and Internet to keep us occupied. Now some of these people haven’t had that for a week, and that is if they are some of the lucky ones, who hadn’t sustained much damage to their homes.

I am just trying to take this day by day. Everyone is.

Coronavirus and life update

So much has happened in the two weeks, and yet nothing has happened at all since I have last written. When speaking about the Coronavirus, I’ll bet that you understand what I mean.

Derek and I are both adjusting to working from home. He works upstairs in the office, while I have made a spot for myself at the dining table. We joke that this is the most use the table has gotten since we bought it about eight years ago.

I started training for my new job. It is hard to learn everything from home through video chats, but everyone has been kind and gracious. I have been assigned a mentor, and we check in with each other daily.

I am trying to keep as much of a routine as possible. Even though I am not commuting in the morning, I still get up at the same time in the morning as if I would be commuting. I take that extra time and have my first cup of tea and browse social media. I try to get up once an hour for two minutes and walk about 150 steps around the apartment, so I am not sedentary. When the weather allows, I take my lunch break out on the balcony, so I can get fresh air and sun.

It may sound silly, but I find that I am missing a daily commute to the office. Having that drive time makes for a good transition. Home is home, and work is work. It’s odd to close my work laptop at 4:45 p.m. and then be on the couch at 4:45:25.

I have been taking a lot of walks around our apartment complex, and two weekends in a row we went to the Walnut Street Bridge, and got to-go drinks from Rembrandt’s Coffee House.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, and while there were a lot of people also out, we managed to keep our distance from everyone because it is a wide bridge. Now we are not so sure that we should have done that.

A photographer with the local newspaper took a photo of everyone walking on the bridge, the same weekend we were there. The photo was published on the newspaper’s website and social media sites. A lot of people were angry, telling others to stay home in the comment section. The issue we both had with this was that the photographer used a tight shot, making everyone appear closer together.

There is a lot of gray area here. We are human beings, and we want to go outside. But now everyone is going outside, more so than usual. This makes it harder to stay safe. And some people have different definitions of safe.

As of this post, there are 1,140,327 confirmed cases in the world, and 278,568 of those are in the United States. There are 3,068 cases in Tennessee and 68 cases in Hamilton County. Eight of those have died.

Most recently, both the mayor of Chattanooga and the governor of Tennessee have executed a Stay at Home Order. We are not allowed to go anywhere except for to get groceries or to seek medical attention.

There is more gray area here and a lot of confusion. Exercise is considered an essential activity, but if we’re not allowed to drive, then can we really go to some of these parks? Some of the city parks have closed, such as Coolidge Park and the Walnut Street Bridge, but others are remaining open. I have seen some media reports that we are allowed to exercise in our neighborhood. I am choosing to think that if we have to drive to get to a place to exercise, then it’s not allowed. It’s better to err on the side of caution.

My parents visit, which was supposed to be in two weeks, is effectively cancelled. We were also planning to go to the Smoky Mountains for a week in May, and I’m assuming that is cancelled too. I received an email last week from the hotel that I had booked, and they had cancelled my reservation for me.

I have this illogical fear that the whole spring and summer is going to go by and we won’t have explored and checked off any of my “Chattanooga to-do” list, and therefore we’re not going to do any of these things ever. Something bad will happen like all of these places will close down for good, or we will have to leave Chattanooga for whatever reason, leaving us with no time. I am trying to reason with myself that this will not happen, and a lot of things can still be done in the fall, if things are back to normal then.

A new job

All of my pre-employment checks have come back clear so now I can say that my new job is officially official today.

Next Tuesday I start as managing editor at a marketing agency that specializes in health care clients. I see a lot of coronavirus articles in my future…

I have been wanting to leave the traditional newsroom for YEARS, but couldn’t break through until now. I am thrilled! After almost 10 years of working for newspapers, I am burnt out, and my mental health has seen better days.

No more breaking news! No more election articles! No more reporting on car accidents and fires! No more evening council meetings!

After being a “jack of all trades, master of none,” it will be good to focus on just a few specific things, and hone my skills.

The job offers generous compensation, plus great benefits and office culture too. What is also beneficial is that the office is only 8 miles away, whereas I was commuting 28 miles to Georgia for my previous job.

Accepting this job is going to be life changing for us. For most of our marriage we have been barely keeping our heads above water, finance wise. Moving around a lot, having a ton of student loan debt, and losing my job (twice now) will do that. It will be a relief to be able to catch up and then some.

I am a frugal person by nature, but it will be nice to not have to tighten our budget so much anymore, because now we can enjoy more of what Chattanooga, and the surrounding areas have to offer.

Because of the Coronavirus, employees are working from home right now. All of my training will be virtual which should be interesting. I am so excited to get started!