Nashville

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A long day of driving for David, but he does such an amazing job, even in the anxiety-raising 3-dimensional spaghetti junctions.

We headed out from the hotel by 8 and crossed the crazy long bridge across Lake Pontchartrain (which averages 14’ in depth) – the longest bridge continuously over water (unlike the Florida Keys which are water and island mixes). And guess where we went? Back to try to find the XXX red cockaded woodpeckers. Still struck out on them. But at the boardwalk over the marsh the King Rail was making his loud sounds, like bull frogs really, and we used the Merlin app to call back to him. He actually managed to cross from one side of the boardwalk to the other TWICE without our seeing him. Then I caught a glimpse but David didn’t get the camera going in time . Finally, he crossed over a gap and voila, the great white hunter got him! At last, a new life bird for us.

The drive was quiet through Mississippi. It wasn’t at all what I expected – lots of trees greening up and slightly rolling hills. The color was mostly the red-bud trees. Hardly any towns to pass through. A quick stop at Wendys for lunch. The traffic was really dense as we approached Nashville – in both directions for some reason. The Blue Green facility here is a downtown building, a new acquisition, so no parking this time.

We headed out to walk to dinner and settled on a food court that was really hopping. It had every imaginable cuisine there, and live music every night. In fact we heard music pouring out of many establishments as we walked. Lots of pedestrians so it felt very safe. Nashville is famous for some sort of chicken sandwich but we passed on that and found a Poke Bowl vendor. It was very tasty indeed. With only 2 nights here, that translates to just one day, so we’re not sure what we can squeeze in. The concierge tried to talk us into the Hop On, Hop Off bus, but at $55 or so a head!? We think we can walk to the main attractions, and after all that sitting, we need to be walking again!

By the way, we think Jean has touched on 46 states, adding AL and MS, and only missing Alaska North Dakota, Nebraska, and Rhode Island.

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