Nashville (Mon.-Tues.)

We left Mike and Nancy's about 11:00 on Monday, after breakfasting on Mike's cinnamon rolls, watermelon and cantaloupe.  I got the inside ready to travel and Joe unplugged the electric cord (Mike was glad to see that!).  Mike led us down to the fuel stop (the kids rode with Joe in the RV and I drove separately), then Ashleigh and I went down to another gas station for sodas (they were out of Diet Coke where we fueled).  It rained a little as Joe was trying to put the awning up, and we hit some rain on the way to Nashville, but we got into our campground about 12:15 and got set up.  We are at Two Rivers Campground, a really nice RV park, which is less than 2 miles from the Grand Ole Opry, so we are in good shape here.  We thought we should get started on our sightseeing here, so we headed out on our own to get our tickets from tomorrow night's performance at the Grand Ole Opry, and then downtown to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.  We only had a couple hours before it closed, and the parking attendant told us we needed to hurry back as soon as it closed because the Hall of Fame was hosting some private event with Vince Gill tonight.

Inside the museum we were greeted with a huge Carrie Underwood exhibit, "Carrie Underwood:  The Blown Away Tour,"  that is currently on display.  It closes November 10.  A lot of her costumes were in this exhibit.

Tiffany's favorite, Reba McIntyre, will be on display next month.  "Reba, All the Woman I Am," exhibit opens August 9.  Too bad we missed that.  Reba has had  "more than 50 top ten singles and more #1 country albums than any other female artist.  She ranks as the most successful female country performer of her generation.  This exhibit will explore her enduring career."

We wandered through 2 floors of exhibits, with several video performances of some of the old stars (yes, including Elvis).  It was all quite interesting.  The third floor contains the "ever-exchanging permanent exhibit tells the story of the music from its pre-commercial roots in the nineteenth century through the vibrant 1960s."  There was also a nice Lee Greenwood exhibit with some of his patriotic costumes.  He is known as the "God Bless the USA" artist.  The second floor "details country music's recent history, examining trends and emerging talent from the 1960s through today."  And of course the first floor has the box office, gift shop, Ford Theater which I don't think we saw, a grill, etc.

Next, we drove around downtown for a little while (kept getting lost, but it didn't matter since we didn't have a destination).  Nashville is an up and coming city, and there's some big money here.  We crossed one of the bridges a few times. The Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers come through here.  It was the Cumberland that flooded in May 2010, when almost 14 inches of rain fell in 2 days, and it flows right past the Grand Ole Opry area.  The Opry had to relocate its performances until they were able to get it back in shape.  There was a lot of concern that the famous "circle" would be destroyed by the flood, but they were able to restore it and it was in place when the Opry reopened on September 28, 2010.

Several times, we passed the Brookstone Arena (hockey) where the Nashville Predators play, and the football stadium where the Tennessee  Titans play.

We found Broadway, where most of the shops and bars are located, and Printers Alley.  Here is a bar with Elvis still hanging around.  And an awesome guitar on a corner.

We finally headed back to the campground.  Mike had recommended a restaurant just down the road from the campground, so we stopped there and had a nice meal.

When we got back to the RV, we picked out a city tour for tomorrow morning, meeting the tour bus at 8:30, so we tried to have an early night.

Tuesday -- we have baby news today.  Andrew is one month old today, and he had a doctor's appointment.  He is almost 10 lbs., and almost 22 inches long, so he seems to be absolutely thriving.  He certainly looks like he is filling out in his pictures.  Sure would like to hold him.






We were the first ones picked up, so we got front row seats.
 
 This was a drive-by tour, with a restroom stop at the Ryman Auditorium, so we did get to see inside it.  We will have to come back tomorrow for a tour here.  Our driver, Tommy, pointed out some of the significant buildings in downtown Nashville, these two are referred to as "R2D2" and the "batman building."

 

 Roy Acuff and Minnie Pearl

Nashville has lots of statues, some evolving around its legendary music history, but other significant ones as well.  Here's Chet Atkins and Billy Graham.

And the State Capitol Building was pretty impressive.  (This was through the window on the other side of the bus, so it's not too good.)

Next up on the tour was a drive-by of the rich and famous homes -- most of them were well hidden behind wonderful trees in the front, curving driveways, gates, etc., and I can't begin to remember who lived where, but some of them belonged to:  Taylor Swift, Dolly Parton, Alan Jackson, Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, Martina McBride, Lea Ann Rimes, and Faith Hill and Tim McGraw.  If I remember right, they just sold their place for $27 million and are building a new home.   Other wealthy people lived in this area as well, not just singers, songwriters and musicians.

We saw some wild turkeys on the golf course, and a few deer in the woodsy neighborhoods.  We finished the tour about noon, grabbed some lunch, then went back to the RV to rest up for our big night at the Grand Old Opry.  It is next to the Opry Mills shopping center, so there was plenty of parking, but it was a bit of a hike after I found a place (I had to drop Joe off because his feet are sore).

The Grand Ole Opry has a lot of history.  It moved to the Ryman Theater in 1943, and then moved to where it is now in1974.  They cut a big circle, approximately 5 feet in diameter, from the Ryman stage and incorporated it into the stage at the Ryman.  The "six-foot circle of dark, oak wood in the Opry House stage is shiny but clearly well worn. Cut from the stage of the Opry's famous former home, the Ryman Auditorium, this circle gives newcomers and veterans alike the opportunity to sing on the same spot that once supported Uncle Dave Macon, Ernest Tubb, Patsy Cline, and others."    I copied the following article about this famous circle and the flooding.


"The six-foot circle of oak was cut from the floor of the Ryman Auditorium and placed in the floor of the new Opry house in 1974, when the Opry moved to its present location. The lighter oak really shines amidst the dark teak that has been installed around it.

“I am honored to share this stage with Jimmy today. To be here, when the circle goes back in place, is wonderful,” Brad [Paisley] said. “It really was emotional to see that black sheet come off it. I had forgotten what it looks like. I thought it was more like a hardwood floor but looking at it now, it looks like many a pair of cowboy boots has walked across it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it that close up. With it up in the air, on its side and only inches away, it’s really something to see. It looks like it could tell a story of its own.”
After the piece was in place, Brad brought out his guitar and he and Jimmy [Dickens] sang a verse and chorus of ‘Will The Circle Be Unbroken.’ “I thought of that last night, that I should bring a guitar,” the singer explained. “I didn’t think this piece should sit here silently for the next month, waiting for the Opry to come back here.”



 We had dinner at the Opry Mills Mall right next to the Opry, then headed over  A young Minnie Pearl was outside greeting people, then we went in and found our seats.

Minnie Pearl was also the first one on stage too.  It wasn't as big an auditorium as I expected, and the seats were padded benches instead of individual seats.  It wasn't full but they had a pretty good crowd for a Tuesday night.  This show is a live radio show -- the longest running live radio show in the world.

Between performances and during the intermission, they broadcast live commercials.

Performers tonight were as follows:

 Keith Anderson

 Connie Smith, a real oldie but she did a great job, still has a beautiful voice.

 Terri Clark, my favorite of the night.  She did Patsy Cline proud with her rendition of "Walkin After Midnight."  She is the only Canadian member of the Grand Ole Opry. 

 Bellamy Brothers.

 The 2 sons of one of the Bellamy Brothers also performed one song, and did a good job.

 A real oldie -- Bill Anderson.  He sang the Unicorn song and it was wonderful.  He got a standing ovation when he completed his song, "Too Country,"  and it brought tears to his eyes.  He said when he took the songs he had written to his producers, they told him they were "too country," so he went home and wrote a song about it.

 Dailey & Vincent.  They did one acapello act and one of the group has a REALLY LOW voice.

 Maggie Rose

 Phil Vassar.  He plays a really wicked piano.

It was all very good.  I was probably the only one in the audience who is not a fan of country music, but I did enjoy this, especially when they sang a song I recognized.  It was definitely an Excellent Adventure.

Manchester, TN (Thurs.-Sun.)

Have been enjoying our time with Mike and Nancy. Mike and Nancy had a huge yard sale the weekend before we got here, and they (especially Mike) are still recuperating from that.  So in order for him to take a nap, we get to take one too.  That seems to work out! Mostly we just visited on Thursday, then when Nancy got home from work, we all went out to dinner.  Ashleigh "camped" with us Thursday night and showed Joe some more tricks on his new SmartPhone.  He now has Pandora loaded.

Friday Mike took us to some yard sales (he is getting ready to open a "booth" at the flea market (technically, I think he is loading up a little trailer he bought and selling off of it), so he made at least one "investment" purchase (a baseball glove for $1).  Then a trip to Walmart.   It was my turn to cook, so I made chicken enchalidas for dinner, and a new cake recipe that was yummy.   Lisa and the kids went to spend the weekend with a friend, so we played some Hand & Foot that evening. The guys spanked us the first game, but I believe we evened it up the second game.  Kept Mike up past his bedtime, though. 

Saturday we drove back to Chattanooga to spend the day with Dana and Michael, had a nice lunch and visit with them.  They are going on a Western Caribbean cruise in a couple of weeks, so they are excited about that.  We are a little envious, although we have been on one of those.  We got back to Mike and Nancy's about 7:00, and played some Hand and Foot again (the guys won both games, which they bragged about).

Sunday Mike fixed us a big "biscuits and gravy" breakfast, along with fresh tomatoes and some of the Georgia peaches we had brought.  We will miss the fresh produce when we head west.  I got the laundry caught up, did a little vacuuming, and Joe pulled some maintenance on the outside (the air conditioner hose had gotten some debris in it and was leaking inside on my feet when we are driving down the road).  He and Mike went for a short drive to get Joe's soda and take the watermelon and cantaloupe rinds down to the river to feed to the fish.


We have a great camping spot here, right beside the basketball hoop, and the price is right.  But Mike has a lot of grass to mow!  And it rains pretty often so that grass is very healthy, grows fast.  We have to get out of here before it's time to mow again, or he might put Joe on that lawnmower.

Nancy and I have been trading recipes (we ARE getting older), and looking at old pictures.  We've enjoyed getting to know their daughter Lisa and her two kids -- we had just barely met them in the past.  Ashleigh is 14 and David is 9, and school starts in about 2 weeks.  We came in Friday morning, and David was the only one up, Mike had fell back asleep on the sofa.  David, ever the gracious host, said "you'all can come back to my room if you want."

Sunday afternoon Nancy and I had our revenge in the Hand and Foot game -- we whipped on the guys pretty badly.  We stopped for dinner (Nancy made pot roast, yummy), then finished the last hand before it got too late, since Nancy has a J O B to go to tomorrow.   David is going to "camp" with us tonight.   Mike said he is making cinnamon rolls for breakfast "so we can get an early start."  I think he is trying to give us a message, since Nashville is only and hour away and that's our destination.  He is also threatening to pull the electric cord, so I guess it's time we move on down the road.  We've had a great time visiting with them.

Arriving Mike & Nancy's (Wed.)

We enjoyed our stay here in Columbus, but this morning it is time to move along.  We now are on sort of an agenda, with a deadline of meeting up with friends in Big Lake, Arizona in mid-August, so I have to crack the whip to keep Joe moving.  He did good this morning, we were on the road by 9:00 a.m -- we knew it was going to be a full day.  He drove 286 miles, a little over our daily goal, but we got to Mike and Nancy's about 4:30, which is 3:30 here.  We took scenic US 27 all the way through Georgia, then picked up I-24 in Chatanooga.  Stopped for gas in Cedartown, GA ($3.399).  We saw an interesting round church in LaGrange, St. Peter Catholic Church.

Crossed several rivers, and some creeks that were as wide as rivers.  Don't know if they were flooded or are always that large but looked like some good fishing areas.

It was a pretty drive, it started out 2-lane driving through lots of trees, then it became 4-lane for most of the way.  We came into Chattanooga about 3:30 so we were just ahead of rush hour.  I always think this is a pretty area, with Lookout Mountain and driving right alongside the Tennessee River. 

It rained a little as we hit the top of Monteagle, but had quit by the time we got to Manchester.  Mike was hurriedly finishing mowing his grass.  He said he had mowed it once but forgot to lower the blade, so he was going over it again.  They have had a lot of rain here lately so he's been spending a lot of time on that riding lawnmower. 

Nancy fixed a great porkchop dinner and we enjoyed the evening visiting with them, as well as Lisa, Ashleigh and David.  Everyone was tired so we had a pretty early night.  Looking forward to spending a few days here.

Columbus,GA (Mon/Tues)

We got a pretty early start on Monday, pulling out of our very restful Ho Hum Campground on the Florida Panhandle.  It rained again during the night and pushed more seaweed up on the coastline, but it wasn't raining when we left.  We just had a biscuit with our tupelo honey for breakfast, so we were on the move by 9:15, headed to Tallahassee, then on into Georgia.  We drove right through downtown Tallahassee on US 27, turned right in front of their awesome capital building, passed a couple WhataBurgers (but didn't stop), and fueled for $3.41.  Their state capitol building is a 22-story building with 3 additional stories underground and was built in 1978.  It was an attention-getter when it came into view.

We found a very nice campground in Columbus and pulled in there about 2:30, just as it started raining again.  This turned out to be a Passport America campground (I almost forgot to ask) so we are staying here for $18.50/night.  It is the Lake Pine Resort, and is about 14 miles from Fort Benning.  The host who checked us in very extremely helpful, recommended things to see, and their information brochure has directions for all kinds of local places -- restaurants, malls, hospital, etc.  I would recommend this place to anyone coming through here.

We are making this stop because this was the Joe's last post when he was in the Army and we thought it would be interesting to drive through the base and around the town (see if we run into any of his old girlfriends!).  We waited out the rain, got set up and then went to find dinner.  Joe was tired (he drove 234 miles today) so we didn't do any sightseeing.  After we ate at Olive Garden, we came back to camp and relaxed for the rest of the evening, read, played on the computer, and watched a little TV.  Just before dark, they started firing artillery on base and we could hear the explosions here at the campground.  We sat outside for a while, soaking up the cool evening (low 70s) and listening to the artillery rounds firing in the distance.  They didn't stop at dark either, but I don't know how late they went on.  It didn't keep us awake, anyway.

Tuesday morning we drove out to Ft. Benning.  We were able to get right in, just had to show ID, but they no longer have a visitor center.  We drove round and round the base, but Joe didn't see anything that looked familiar from 45 years ago when he was stationed here for about 6 months.  This fort specializes in infantry training, and there is an awesome Infantry Museum on base. 

We didn't take any pictures on post, but we circled around several times, and found the campground which is just off-post.  It has a boat ramp right in the campground, which is on an inlet off the Chattahoochee River.  We called Tiffany, who happened to have a copy of Joe's DD214 on her computer, to find out what Division Joe was in when he mustered out of here (it was 818th Engineers), but we never found any signs about that so they may no longer be stationed here. 

Next we stopped at the National Infantry Museum and Soldier Center (my dad was in the Infantry in WWII).  This is a "WOW."

 The first part of the museum is the "Last 100 Yards Ramp," which has life-size exhibits of 8 different wars.  This was too spectacular to describe, with action figures, video clips showing right on parts of the exhibit.  For example, there was a full-size parachute open, and the video clip showed up in the top of the parachute, with hundreds of paratroopers descending.  Joe took a few pictures but they no way do it justice.

The motto here is "the last 100 yards belong to the Infantry."  Downstairs were several more exhibit theatres, covering different periods of wars.  Part of the WWI theatre included trenches where we walked through a cave-like area, dark and moist, with, again, full-size exhibits of soldiers climbing ropes getting out of the bunkers, or hunkered down.  There was video in most of the areas depicting battles.  Another area that was really interesting was an "in-country" jungle of Viet Nam.  We walked in a dark hall, right between tall jungle-like trees, with bamboo-spears buried under a grate that soldiers would accidentally step on.  Joe could really relate to this area.

We had not been able to find any barracks that Joe recognized on post, but from a window in this museum he caught sight of some.  We found out they had actually been moved from the fort and are now part of a tour, where you can go into them.  We had missed the last tour of the day, but we did drive over and take some pictures through the fence.  These are exactly like the barracks he stayed in here.

We finally left here and wound our way, round and round again, to get off the base.  We did finally drive through the upscale housing area were the brass live.  We felt we covered the base pretty well.  From here, we headed into Phenix City, Alabama, where Joe sewed a few more wild oats during his time here.  He was trying to find a country western bar he sometimes visited (when he had money) but, again, he didn't see anything that looked familiar.  I told one gal I was looking for his old girlfriends, or his children, or his grandchildren.  He said he didn't think so!

We stopped at a great Mexican restaurant for dinner about 7:00, then headed back to camp.  Joe took a picture of our bulletin board where we have our grandchildren on display.  We have officially added Andrew Thomas to the gallery.  But we need a bigger picture.

Last day at Ho Hum (Sun.)

We had planned on fishing this morning, but it stormed during the night, and we got up to pretty strong winds, white caps on the water, so we decided to do our chores instead.  After a quick trip into town for Joe's morning caffeine (diet Coke), we got the laundry and vacuuming done and settled in to watch the NASCAR race.  I kept an eye on the fishing pier but no one else seemed inclined to fight the wind either.  The one kid (Brian) who was throwing his net last night, and who fished with us yesterday, was out for a while this morning, but he did more casting of his net off the pier than he did fishing.

We continued to learn more about this area.  There's a lot of WWII history here, this is where the troops trained for the Normandy Invasion.  I guess there's a book, Sunshine Beach, about that (it's fiction but would probably be good to read).  The campground host said it's out of print now, though, and only available through Kindle books.  Something to check into.

After the race, we decided to walk out to the pier and check out the weather.  We decided it wasn't quite as windy, so I thought we should try fishing one more time.  So we walked back to the RV and gathered up our poles and tackle, and back to the pier we went.  I had to catch some bait fish first, but Joe started out with our day-old frozen shrimp and got to pretty good hits right away.  It took me a while to get any bait fish, and I dropped the first one I had, but I finally got us some, and I started fishing too. 

So here's Joe and me seriously fishing.  And you can see how far away the RV is from the fishing pier in the second picture.

 Joe decided to live dangerously here and see if he could fall off the rail. 

Here's my bucket of bait fish.  We were trying to fish with live bait, but if the fish died in the bucket, we would cut the head and tail off and use it for "cut bait."  But nothing seemed to work for me.  All I caught was the bait fish.

But for Joe, things got exciting.  He hooked into something that just took his line straight out.  It didn't take long for him to figure out it was another stingray.  He fought it from one end of the fishing pier to the other, going over my line, and then over to the side. He would gain a little line, then the fish would just take straight off again.

Our new friend, Brian, was out in the water with his net, so he yelled for Joe to bring him toward him and he would try to throw his net over him.  Well, Joe really wasn't the one deciding where that fish was going -- it was going exactly where it wanted to go.  But it did go around the end of the fishing pier, and over by the boardwalk.  Brian was on the other side of the boardwalk.  So Joe tried to steer the fish that way, then the fish went under the boardwalk.  Brian waded under the boardwalk and took Joe's pole from him, then tried to reel the fish in.  It did come to the top a couple of times, and we could see it was a really large stingray, probably in the 50-lb range.  Brian wasn't winning the battle with the fish either, so he gave Joe his pole back, I went down the boardwalk and got Brian's net and threw it to him, and he tried to throw the net over the fish.

Brian finally got the net thrown over the stingray and we all headed toward shore.  But when we got in, we discovered that the fish had escaped the net, with the hook, and Joe had an empty pole.  Quite disappointing, but it was exciting for a while.  We had a little audience watching all this.

We fished for another hour or so but didn't have any luck, so we gave it up, came in and had a late dinner, and Joe defrosted the refrigerator.  He was beat after his big battle with "the one that got away."  But we have new fish tales to tell.


We've enjoyed our time here, pretty restful and it's always nice to be around the water.  Tomorrow we head to Georgia.