2014 Day One: Tennessee

Saturday, June 28th 2014

Back on the road!  This trip begins a little differently than last time.  First stop, North Carolina, a bit of a familiar place.  

Well.. it was a 9 hour detour to our trip.  Since we are one member larger than we were last year, we made arrangements for our Half Pint to stay at a boarding place in North Carolina recommended by Gary, our friend.  A big thank you to Gary for getting him there on this morning, getting us on the road as quickly as possible.

Now.. onward.

Sunday, June 29th

Right in the middle of climbing the Appalachian Mountains on I-40, we found the state line.  Tennessee, the volunteer state, a state that I still can't spell properly without double-checking.  The nickname comes from the war of 1812, when so many soldiers from Tennessee volunteered for battle.  You can thank google for that little tidbit.

My initial impression is the humidity... and then the raging lightning storm that lasted 5 minutes.  Once again we are at the mercy of nature as we trek across the country.  An east-moving storm vs. a west-moving vehicle comes on fast and hard and then it's over.  At least it cools the near 90 degree heat down for a bit.

Our first stop today is Knoxville.  On the map it seems a large city, in person it's a bit of a sleeper, with one "busy" commercial district somewhat hidden.  If we hadn't intended to have lunch here, we might not have found it.  A common theme with these middle-america cities is definitely not to find the upper class living right outside of them, I'll leave it at that.  But here it is, beautiful downtown Knoxville, pretty much in a nutshell:

 A bit hard to see, but below that large tree is a monumnet for Womens Suffrage.

So, as per our intent, we had lunch.  A good one! Our first stop in Tennessee was a bit of a taste of southern hospitality.  We ate at Tupelo's Honey Company, brazenly abbreviated "THC" as printed on the front of their staff shirts.  Pretty delicious, and my first time having a side of Fried Okra and Succotash.  This was definitely the best meal of the day.

Anyways... out we were after that.  Destination Nashville, with a quick detour in Cookeville.  A review of the area said that where the Coffee shop that we stopped at was is the only "hip" part of town.  Truth.  This place really was an example of small town America, but they just happened to have an amazing coffee shop.  Please excuse my travel companion caught at the mercy of my camera.

Grabbed our cups and back on the road.  Not much longer (although I did fall asleep) and we were in Nashville.  We like to exit the highway early so we can get an idea of the area before getting downtown, but again another example of not the best place to be before getting to the city.  

Nashville, however, is a fantastic place to visit.  I've been labeling it the Country version of Times Square.  Even on our Sunday night this place was vibrant.

This is Broadway, where most of Nashville's action is.  Just bar after bar, after gift shop, after bar.  Every bar, and I mean that with maybe only one or two exceptions, had live music.  Some great, some just OK, but everywhere was a good time.  Bushwackers, anyone?  Let's just say Milkshake meets Whiskey.  Good stuff.  Lots of open-air places, rooftops, fresh air and loud music.  Anywhere on this strip was loud and exciting.  Forgive the repeating photos or overlapping photos, I had to capture everything and that was a tough feat.

Tennessee Titan's stadium, taken from a rooftop obviously from behind someone... Sorry, a lot of bars means a lot of drinks after a while..

We walked onto, but not across, a pedestrian bridge that crosses the river.  Some good views of the city at night.  The AT&T building is huge.  Not so many tall buildings around here, so it seemed even bigger.  The kind of big that looking at it can make you dizzy.

Oh, and our hotel was right around the corner from the Country Music Hall of Fame.  No, we didn't go.  We wouldn't have been able to appreciate it, not knowing much about Country.  We actually met some people at a bar that seemed quite offended that we were in Nashville and didn't know the name of the band or song that they were about to be appearing in said music video for...  Forgot the name already.  Told them we'd youtube it but, looks like that's not going to happen. (Oh well).

What a fun night, really.  Great fun place to visit.  I hate to compare the trip to last year's adventure, but I wish the drive was more scenic.  But I'd recommend taking the travel for a weekend if the opportunity presented.

Monday, June 30th

Today we have quite the itinerary.  First stop is Memphis.  After that we'll be going into Arkansas and planning a stop in Little Rock.  Final destination will be Dallas Texas.  It's about to be a long day.  More later.