Family Road Trip 2019 (Part 1)

One of our main goals as a family is to create unforgettable experiences together, and one of the major ways we do that is traveling. We have decided that we are going to take a family road trip every year, and we just got home from our trip. Efraim and I both agree that this trip was our favorite trip as a family so far. I wanted to share with you the places we stopped and a little bit of what we did.

Birmingham, AL

We picked up the girls from my parents in Panama City Beach and headed towards Birmingham. To break up the drive a little bit, we stopped at Desoto Caverns in Childersburg, AL. The caverns were amazing, and they have a ton of other activities for the kids on site. The girls got to ride a train, find some gems and walk through a maze.

We spent the next three days walking around the town of Birmingham where we stopped into St. Paul’s Cathedral and an antique bookstore (this stop was for me) and some other super cute little shoppes. Our second night in Birmingham, we took the girls out for a fine dining experience, and we got to meet the chef who signed our menu. On our last day, we took the girls to the Birmingham Art Museum. I would highly recommend this museum if you are in Birmingham. There is an entire area just for kids with different art activities they can do, and there is a scavenger hunt where you have to find different pieces of art throughout the entire museum. We had so much fun here!

Chattanooga, TN

Next stop was Chattanooga, but first, a stop at The Lost Sea to break up the drive. So, this was one of the coolest things I have ever seen. The Lost Sea is literally a lake that is underground. The tour starts at the top of the caverns, and you work your way down until you get to the lake, and then you actually get to go out on the lake on a boat. I just could not believe that this whole lake was down there. The water has this beautiful blueish color to it because of all of the limestone, and there are fish down there!

Guys, I feel like I can write a whole post just about Chattanooga, and this part of the trip almost didn’t happen! We timed it so that we would arrive right at dinner time and already knew which restaurant we were going to. However, we got to the restaurant only to find out that they were closed because they didn’t have any running water. “No big deal, we will try another restaurant.” NOPE! The second restaurant was also closed because of no running water. That’s when we started to realize that a lot of places had signs on their doors. After a quick google search, we found out that the whole city of Chattanooga was either under a boil water notice or didn’t have running water. At this point, we were just hungry and tired from being on the road; so, we picked up some food at Publix and headed to our Airbnb. We got to the house, and it looked great, but there was a problem….no water!!!! At this point, it was 8:30; we had been on the road for hours, we hadn’t eaten and we had no running water. Efraim and I started searching for a different place to stay outside of Chattanooga, but we couldn’t find anything. We decided to just stay one night and see what the water situation was the next day, and at four in the morning, we got water! I am SO glad the whole thing worked out because Chattanooga was our favorite stop of the trip!

Tennessee Aquarium

Best aquarium I’ve ever been to!

Tennessee River and Coolidge Park

Rock City

Rock City is an absolute MUST. If I had to pick one thing to do again in Chattanooga, this would be it!

Ruby Falls

Ruby Falls is an underground waterfall, and it was so beautiful.

Sunset Rock Hike

Our family loves to hike while on vacation. I’ve done a TON of hikes growing up, and honestly, this one isn possibly my favorite. It has one of the best views I’ve ever seen. The girls LOVE hiking because of this hike.