The next place was called Ruby Falls.  This place we judged as just being OK.  You have to remember that we have had some experience spelunking, or caving, when we were much younger.  We actually spent a weekend in a cave….slept there, ate there, explored there, pooped there, all in complete darkness, except for our miners hat that we wore.  So I learned a lot more about caves thru that experience than this one.  But we didn’t know what to expect at the time so off we went.

We started out this little adventure by following a huge RV who was going to the same place we were.  The roads we were traveling on were very narrow and curvy.  Apparently the person who was driving the RV in front of us, had never driven one before, was super cautious or a total idiot.  (But who am I to judge, I’ve never driven one before either)  He started out by driving down the middle of this little, narrow, curvy road at 10 MPH.  I assumed he drove like this to either to keep the trees from brushing, and there by scratching, the sides of the RV or to play chicken with the on coming cars.  He was doing a good job of both :).  When we finally arrived at our destination, he stopped by the parking lot, pretty much on a curve, in the middle of the narrow, curvy road.  I assumed he was trying to figure out where the heck he was going to park that big honking thing.  Of course I was the first car in a long line of cars that had backed up following him down the road.  I got an opening to pass him, pulled out, and narrowly missed side swiping our van as a car came screaming around the curve.  Whoops!  Gary had his eyes closed and was saying his Hail Mary’s.  I swooped back in, pulled into the parking lot and was able to find a parking spot pretty close to our destination.  Whew!  We made it :).

Ruby Falls at Lookout Mountain

Once we arrived, we sat on a couple of very nice beefy wooden chairs and looked at the view, taking deep breaths to calm our hearts and lower our blood pressure

Nice View

We started our tour by getting on a very quick elevator that took us down 360 feet.  The first place we stopped had very low ceilings

Watch your head!

And they did warn us to watch our heads and our feet.  Luckily, neither of us smacked our heads or fell on our butts through out this tour.

We were in a group of about 25, so taking time to take pictures along the way wasn’t really feasible as we were in the middle of the group.  The guide pointed out various points of interest

Our Guide

This white thing was the only thing they let us touch, and advised us not to touch any of the living, or wet, stalagmites that would be coming up from the floor or the stalactites that would be coming down from the ceiling, like these

Still living

or this one that is called Donkey

Donkey butt

Squint your eyes…..see it now?  They had a few other things that looked like an elephant foot, angel wings, turtle etc, etc.  But again, I am being moved along quickly so….no pictures of that stuff :(.

There were some people who threw money in some little puddles of water

Making a wish?

I wonder how much additional money they make from this?  Do people have such bad luck that they are willing to throw their coins into what ever little puddle of water they find?  Not me.  I’m one of those people who picks up pennies off the ground, the last thing I would be doing is throwing my hard-earned money into a puddle in a cave.  It’s not even a real wishing well!  What were these people thinking?

So, back to the tour.  They had some back lighting on some of the stalactites

But you could tell most of them were dead, so different from the caves we explored in Minnesota.

They took us about 1,100 feet deeper into the cave were we finally reached our destination, cause this really was all about the destination…..Ruby Falls.

Up close

A little further away with the camera

Of course they had dramatic music on while the lights changed colors.  It was pretty, but again.  So so.  One of the guys in our group commented, “Ya’d never know we were just inside a building, would ya?”    I got a chuckle out of that.  After the viewing of the falls, we made the trek back to the elevator.  Maybe if we had never been caving before it would be better.  Of course the name is Ruby Falls, not Ruby Caves, so what did I expect?

We are going to be seeing the Raccoon Mountain Caverns which is supposed to be the one of the best 10 cave tours in the country, so maybe that will be better.  Ruby Falls does have a Zip Stream ride there, Fun Forest and Gem Panning for the kids, plus another lookout to check out the scenery.  But all in all, we rate this as just a so so attraction, especially for the cost of $37.90 for the both of us.