All fall bucket lists should include Lookout Mountain! Visitors could easily spend a day or weekend enjoying all of the events, activities and beautiful fall foliage within just a short driving distance of each other. Just to name a few, there’s Blowing Springs Farm in Flintstone, Georgia, Rock City’s Rocktoberfest in Lookout Mountain, GA and for haunt enthusiasts, Ruby Falls’ Haunted Cavern in Chattanooga, Tennessee featuring one of the south’s scariest haunts!
Blowing Springs Farm returns this fall better than ever, with new activities including pedal karts, duck races, a pumpkin market, corn hole, a revamped playground with tunnel slides, baby animals to meet, a new corn maze design and more!
A new Enchanted MAiZE design every season ensures adventurers never take the same path through the corn! This year, use the new pop culture corn text game for clues to help get through the maze. The 2016 design’s fall fun theme features animals that are onsite at Bagby’s Critter Corral. Guests can interact and take photos with a variety of animals including mini Scottish Highland cows, donkeys and a horse, plus goats, sheep, rabbits, alpacas and even a pot-bellied pig! Babies include donkeys, goats and an alpaca.
Some of the returning activities include the cow train, hay ride, corn crib station, corn slingshots and pumpkin painting. Try some fried Oreos or boiled peanuts too!
Blowing Springs Farm is owned and operated by See Rock City (SRC), Inc. SRC features the world-renowned Rock City Gardens high atop Lookout Mountain, just six miles from downtown Chattanooga, TN. SRC also owns and operates Battles for Chattanooga museum, Starbucks, the Incline Railway concessions and ticketing, and Grandview Conference Center on Lookout Mountain, as well as Clumpies Ice Cream Co. in Chattanooga.
Rock City also hosts Rocktoberfest on Saturdays and Sundays in October, rocking German music, food and festivities! This eleventh annual festival features live German bands including The Wurstbrats, Die Mitternaechters and The Musik Meisters! Dancers also perform German and Bavarian folk dances.
Interact with one-of-a-kind characters like Ik the Troll King, the fall fairy, a mime, balloon artist and Rocky the elf, Rock City’s beloved mascot. Also see the popular Birds of Prey Shows, where kids can get a stamp in their passport as they visit different areas throughout the park. Adventure passports are given out upon entering Rock City and include activities and coupons!
Try some German food like bratwursts and beer cheese soup in the pavilion and German chocolate cake in the Big Rock Grill! Café 7, overlooking unmatched scenery near Lover’s Leap, offers some fantastic wiener schnitzel!
Rock City Gardens continues to partner with the MaryEllen Locher Foundation honoring breast cancer awareness month during October. Stop by the new “Rock the Pink” photo booth and dress up in a fun assortment of pink attire. Several pink products including Survivor Birdhouses and ornaments are for sale, with a portion of proceeds benefitting this organization and their scholarship program.
And just a few miles away from Rock City on Lookout Mountain…terror is lurking at the Flesh Farm as the Ruby Falls Haunted Cavern unleashes a monster outbreak Fridays – Sundays through Oct. 30, with additional openings on Oct. 13, 20 and Halloween. The area’s top haunt opens nightly at dark with the Freak Parade beginning at 7:30 p.m. Every year brings a new theme, new characters and new fear factors, with returning favorites like the Hellevator, chainsaws and fire-breathing.
The Haunted Cavern is an experience unlike any other that takes place 26 stories underground in a cave (with one way out), as well as an above-ground haunt that is equally horrific. 2016’s Flesh Farm is a world torn by infection and chaos, where the Matron Mojo has formed her own brutal society that feeds on the madness. Her “revenants” hunt the living – zombies to be farmed – to satisfy her sinister urges. Skud Row Outpost was formed from the ashes of what many called Ruby Falls and now thrives on the blood of the weak, ruled by Matron’s “wretchers.”
The Ruby Falls Haunted Cavern is in its thirteenth year of fear, and has continued to terrify record-breaking crowds annually. It was awarded the Ongoing Special Event Award in 2015 by Tennessee Hospitality & Tourism Association and in 2014 listed as number four on Buzzfeed’s national list of “19 Terrifying Haunted Houses You Should Experience Before You Die.” It has also been awarded the sixth spot on the national haunt list by Rand McNally.
If you’re not into being scared, a daytime visit to Ruby Falls might be for you. This attraction is home to America’s deepest commercial cave and largest underground waterfall open for public viewing. It features a 145-foot waterfall located 1,120 feet beneath the surface of Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
All three of these events are on the Top 20 Event list by Southeast Tourism Society!