October 18 Through October 24 (Click on the images to see and scroll them in full size)
Nashville was AMAZING, we could have easily spent another 3 or 4 days here and still not have done it all.
On our first day, we had to find a post office so Christine could buy stamps to mail our grandson Callan his weekly post card. We also walked through downtown and visited the County Music Hall of Fame. The history contained in that museum was awesome. Even if you are not a country music fan, it was a great example of how much country music has been part of the fabric of our country throughout our history.
One thing that I have never seen before we got to Nashville was DIAGONAL crosswalks. No need to cross to one corner and then wait for the light to cross again, you can go directly ACROSS the intersection. Still not sure how they work, but crossed when everyone else did and did not get hit by a car, so I will call that a win.
On Wednesday we decided to take a trolley tour of Nashville with our friends Glenn and Carol from Encore. The trolley made 13 stops and as they drove around Nashville the drivers maintained a running history. One really interesting thing that I never knew was that Nashville is also known as the "Athens of the South, right down to a copy of the Greek Parthenon complete with a 42 foot tall statue of Athena (The largest indoor statue in the US) holding a 6 foot statue of the Greek God Nike in her hand. Nashville got this nickname because of their dedication to education through their colleges and universities.
After the first round, we picked different places we wanted to get of the trolley. We visited a car company the I had never heard of, the Marathon car company which produced cars WAY back in 1913. They had a shopping arcade in the old car company building and had displays of equipment that really appealed to the recovering engineer in me.
We also walked through the Tennessee State Museum and Centennial Park. This was a free museum and was on par with any other museum that I had ever walked through. the 3 hours we spent there did not even put a dent in what there was to see. One of my favorite exhibits was on Alvin York, also known as Sergeant York, one of the most decorated US Army soldiers of World War I. He received the Medal of Honor for leading an attack on a German machine gun nest, gathering 35 machine guns, killing at least 25 enemy soldiers and capturing 132 prisoners. The amazing fact was he initially applied for contentious objector status and was denied. I first heard about him through the movie where Gary Cooper played this amazing hero. I highly recommend it.
Our last stops for the day were dinner at the Aquarium Restaurant and the Grand Old Opry. The restaurant, which had a 200,000 gallon saltwater fish tank as a centerpiece. was amazing and when we realized that we were just across the street from the Grand Old Opry, we had no choice, but to attend our very first show there. It was really fun and now I can check off one more thing from my bucket list.
The next few days involved traveling back to Green Turtle Bay Marina and starting back down Kentucky Lake toward the Ten-Tom waterway which we will take to the Gulf. It will be nice to see some new water once we pass Paris Landing State Park at the bottom of Kentucky Lake. We are not in a hurry, because our boat insurance will not allow us below 32 degrees latitude which puts us at Demopolis, AL before November 2 because of hurricane season.
In the next few days we will be visiting Birdsong Marina which boasts a freshwater pearl museum and we will continue down the Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway (Tenn Tom for short) on our way to the Gulf.
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