After the heavy rain Friday evening, we awoke to a sunny Saturday morning so things were looking good as we headed into downtown Nashville. Most of the parking meters we saw were limited to 2 hours so we opted to do an all day for $10 parking lot close to the downtown Starbucks where we parked ourselves for a coffee and bit of reading before hitting the streets. While in Starbucks we chatted with one of the staff who recommended an area of Nashville called Hillsboro so we decided that might be a good place to wander tomorrow. Today was downtown, Broadway, Country Music Hall of Fame and Grand Ole Opry day.
After coffee we walked down the hill two blocks to Lower Broadway which is four blocks of live country music venues, restaurants and tourist crap places. On the way down the hill we passed by the historic Ryman Auditorium...
As we approached the corner of 4th and Broadway at 11:00 AM, the sounds of live music emanated from the Legends Corner and continued about every second or third door down the street. We wandered up and down Lower Broadway for about an hour and a half before settling on Jack's BBQ for lunch. The BBQ was pretty good but upon leaving Brian ended up with some sauce smeared on his left hip...went back into the restaurant to clean up then back on the street discovered more sauce on his right hip... what the???... turns out his shoulder bag had been set in some previous person's spilled sauce on a chair and then got smeared on his clothing as we walked out... required a visit to a restroom at the visitor's center across the street for a good cleaning! Annoying, but just a minor setback.
We then walked down the street to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. The front of the building is pretty cool with the windows forming the shape of a piano keyboard...
We found the line up to be quite long and concluded that the museum would be very, very crowded so decided to just visit the gift store where we picked up a number of great music CDs and other souvenirs. By that time it was mid afternoon and getting very hot out so it was back to the KOA for a dip in the pool and rest before we headed for the Grand Ole Opry 7:00 PM show.
The Grand Ole Opry is right across the parking lot from the Opry Mills Mall (a rather huge mall with lots of parking) so we thought that parking shouldn't be an issue... well it appears that Saturday evening is a popular place at that mall because we ended up way off in a back corner of the lot with a bit of a hike over to the Opry House.
The mall must have been popular because the Opry House was only about half full that night (the capacity is only about 4200). The Opry is a live radio show which runs for 2.25 hours. The Saturday night show has run continuously since 1924 and they say it is the longest running radio show in the world. They divide the show up into 4 sets with each set having a different host and 2 or 3 performers. On this night the main named performers we saw were Riders in the Sky and Charley Pride. The rest were a mix of new young talent and older performers, the oldest being Little Jimmy Dickens... as they might say, here in the south, "bless his little heart" for being able, at 92 years young, to be out there. After the show we went to the gift store. One thing we bought was a bright red guitar shaped fly swatter because as Kris says, with a reference to Little Jimmy, "... bad country music CAN KILL!..." He was lots of fun though!
Sunday we set out for the Hillsboro district recommended at Starbucks yesterday. It is a cool little area covering a number of square blocks but unfortunately, for us, most of the stores were closed on Sunday. In one store window we saw something that caught our eye. They had a small living wall/vertical garden installed in a frame made from old barn boards...
... hmmm, neat idea, might have to give that a try when we get home.
We wandered around for a bit then drove to another area where we stopped in at a California Pizza Kitchen which always makes for a good comfort food lunch stop, in this case a couple of fish tacos. Nearby is a large mall we checked out before heading back to the KOA to plan the next part of our trip.
That evening while researching our route we discovered that Paducah Kentucky, a bit northwest of Nashville is the home of the National Quilt Museum so we decided to head there for a couple of nights. Monday, the non-interstate drive took us through the LBL (Land Between the Lakes), a national recreation area a very pretty drive which takes you from Tennessee into Kentucky about half way through. Just south of the LBL we stopped in at the Fort Donelson National Battlefield, a civil war site where the Confederates surrendered 13,000 troops to General Grant early in the war. Confederate General Buckner surrendered to Grant at the Dover Inn...
Completing the drive, we settled into the KOA (about 25 miles east of Paducah) then found that we had to drive to another county (this one being dry) to get some wine for the evening, so off we went. We discovered the KOA is just outside the town of Possum Trot... yes, you read right...
...you can't make this up!... and if you need to catch up on your gun reading, the local store magazine rack is choc-a-bloc full of all the magazines you might need...
...you won't find the New Yorker magazine here, but we digress. Tuesday, we drove into Paducah, found a Starbucks for a morning coffee then headed for the National Quilt Museum.
We spent a couple of hours wandering through the wonderful exhibits. Very inspiring. Later, since Paducah is essentially quilting central, we (well, Kris) stopped in at a couple of the larger quilting stores for even more inspiration. Unfortunately it was too darn hot out (high 30's low 40's C) to do much walking around the historic downtown area so we just did a short driving tour before calling it a day.
The rest of this week was basically a few travel days as we learned the Mountaineer Opry House (West Virginia's home to Bluegrass Music) in Milton WV is celebrating it's 40th anniversary this coming Saturday (July 28th) and thought that this would be a cool thing to attend. So east across Kentucky we went...
Wednesday we stopped at the KOA in Bowling Green the place where Chevrolet Corvettes are manufactured. After getting the wee trailer all set we headed into downtown to find some lunch. Another really hot (39C) day and not great for wandering around so we just cruised around downtown checking out the look of several restaurants before settling on The Bistro located on College Street. GOOD CHOICE... a beautiful old building! We both had the Thai Chicken Salad... GOOD CHOICE... excellent! By the way; driving around in Bowling Green, that afternoon, we did not see a single Corvette! OK, as we left town Thursday morning we did see one token Corvette.
Thursday was a nice drive east through the rolling hills of the Kentucky countryside to the KOA in the Renfro Valley. It turns out that the Renfro Valley is not only home to the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame, but also to the Renfro Valley Entertainment Center. We didn't get a chance to take in the music hall of fame but did attend a musical tribute to the 1950's at the Entertainment Center. Very entertaining.
Friday we had a choice... either give into the world of the interstate and do a 2.5 hour drive (about right for us) or take a winding 5-6 hour drive (quite long for us) through the forests and backwoods of eastern Kentucky. We opted for the longer drive and did not regret it. Beautiful countryside and some of it quite remote. The day started out with a heavy downpour so we were actually quite happy to not be on the interstate. Late morning the rain dissipated so all was well. We stopped for lunch in the small town of Salyersville. Driving toward town we saw a large section of forest which appeared to have simply been uprooted and as we entered the town we saw more devastation of buildings with roofs ripped off etc. When we stopped for lunch we chatted with a local law enforcement officer who told us about the March 2012 Tornado which hit the area. Twenty-two fatalities in Kentucky alone from this tornado.
Leaving Kentucky (but we will be back next week) we entered West Virginia where we will spend the next couple of nights at the Huntington KOA before heading north into Ohio and on to Cincinnati for a ball game next week.
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