Tour 2008: Day 6 – June 21, Chattanooga, TN

Today’s trip from Birmingham was a relatively short trip, but included a time change so it was lunchtime when we approached Chattanooga.  This is our first year utilizing a GPS and it has been fun to have that experience.  Most of the time it has taken us directly to where we need to go successfully and recalculated our route when necessary if we needed to make an unexpected change in direction.  That has really been nice and has minimized some stress during travel. Only one time has it sent us around a block in a circle and continued to send us in that circle until we ignored the directions and made a different turn. Today, we improved on the process by having one GPS focusing on our destination and a second one finding our preferred lunch location.  We found our first Wendy’s, which historically has been our fast food of choice for tour.  We were not able to find one on our other two lunch days, but everyone was happy today!

After lunch, we traveled the short distance to the Tennessee Aquarium for our tour.  There were two fabulous buildings to tour and two gift shops.  The most popular exhibits were the butterfly house, the sting ray touch pool, the otters and the penguins.  The fun of the butterfly house was having the butterflies land on your hand, shoulder or head!  Some of the kids attracted the butterflies better than others so their friends took their pictures.

 

 

 

We rode the few blocks to First Baptist Church and found what had to be one of the largest churches we have ever performed in on this side of the ocean.  Its size reminded many of us of the cathedrals in England.  We unloaded the bus and setup in record time as a thunderstorm was threatening, but never materialized.  In addition to their cavernous room, they had a wonderful organ, too which Mr. Pope enjoyed playing.  The rehearsal and concert went well and as usual it was such a joy to see the growth in everyone’s performance during the week.  We have had a great audience at every performance this week and tonight’s audience numbered the largest yet.  The kids worked hard to make this the best performance of the week, too.  As is our tradition, the final “Lord Bless You and Keep You” of the year was performed by the graduating seniors (Alex Campbell, David Filipcazk, Joel Hanel, Kelsey Harrison, Ashton Johnston). Also included was Carolyn Dalrymple who is leaving the choir for boarding school.

 

Tomorrow, it’s off to All Saints Chapel in Sewanee and then on to Atlanta, GA for our last stop.  We’ve had a great time and all of our singers have grown and matured, becoming more independent every day.  Back to Charlotte on Monday!