Stop 12: Nashville, TN

We had one of our longer drives between Memphis and Nashville. I just want to say that I've never seen a state where so may people are clueless about how to merge onto a freeway. On multiple occasions, I was doing my usual 55 MPH in the slow lane when I spotted someone about to come onto the freeway ahead of me. Most of the on ramps give people their own lane for about 100 yards which should be plenty of time for these people to get up to speed and merge. On at least 3 occasions, they came onto the freeway in their own lane and passed me. It was obvious that they were going to come on in front of me, right? I even eased up on the gas a little to make sure that they had plenty of room. But no, they got clear to the end of their 100 yards, decided to look in their mirror, suddenly became aware of me and slammed on the brakes, coming to a complete stop on the freeway. I nearly got run down by semis in the process.

That was just the 3 close calls. I can't tell you haw many cars we passed that were stopped at the end of on ramps waiting for a break in traffic. When I learned to drive in the mid-60's, the instructor warned us to watch for old people who'd never learned to merge onto a freeway. They are alive and well and still young in Tennessee.

Nashville seems like a pretty great place. We're at a very nice KOA near the new Grand Ole Opry Auditorium. As we were setting up, we noticed that a caulk line on the front of Baby had come loose. Many times, when we needed something to fix the trailer, we got on the internet to figure out when we would next be near a Camping World. Here, we're about 50 yards from Camping World so we just walked over. They had the caulk but no caulk gun. Another 100 yards down the street took us to a place that sold caulk guns. Repair accomplished.

We are in Nashville for 2 nights so today was our sightseeing day. We set the GPS to take us to the Ryman Auditorium, figuring that that would get us to the middle of what we wanted to see. Even with the GPS, navigating Nashville isn't easy. The highways are a tangle and we're constantly being told to be in the left lane, be in the right lane, be in the left lane, etc.

Unfortunately, there was a race called the Color Run (5k?) going on that had all of the streets closed off. The race route completely encircled the area that we wanted to get to. We finally found a police officer who was willing to let us through. Pictures and descriptions follow:

The front of the Ryman Auditorium (that's Kristen below the entrance.

Inside the Ryman. We asked the crew who they were setting up for and learned that there's a Weird Al Yankovic concert tonight.

Inside the Ryman.

Stained glass windows at the Ryman.

The Ryman stage from the balcony. These looked to us like the better seats. We've seen concerts from the Ryman and wondered why we sometimes saw posts and sometimes didn't. It all depends on whether the cameras are upstairs or downstairs.

The Color Run running through the Honky Tonk District. The race gets it's name from the powdered paint that they occasionally throw all over the runners (I have no idea why).

More yellow powder.

We got tired of breathing yellow powder so we headed over to the Cumberland River.

More Cumberland River.

The River Park was a mecca for homeless people so we headed back to the Honky Tonk District where we quickly stumbled upon the orange paint powder station.

We actually saw people going through this powdering process with infants in strollers. Unbelievable.

Just about every other business in the Honky Tonk is a bar or restaurant and they all have live entertainment. I honestly think that these people just perform for tips and the chance to sell their CDs. I looked at the websites for a couple of these places a while back and they weren't taking reservations for customers but they were reserving times for artists who wanted to perform. We saw this guy, Steven Clawsen, at the Tequila Cowboy and enjoyed him a lot.

After leaving downtown, we decided to visit the new Grand Ole Opry Center.

Addendum: There is a restaurant, immediately adjacent to our trailer called "Cock of the Walk". We looked at it yesterday and, after learning that everything on the menu was fried in peanut oil, decided to skip it. It smelled so good last night that, this evening, we decided to go next door and sample their catfish specialty. It was wonderful. Johnny Cake (cornbread in a frying pan) with jalapeno, followed by our catfish with hush puppies and slaw on a bed of fries. Way too much food (we left half of it) but man was it good.

-JC-