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Published: August 6th 2007
Country Music Captial - Nashville
Here we are outside of 'Legends' which is one of the many Country Music Bars which line the streets of the Downtown areaOur longest road trip to date started on Thursday 22 March with the drive back up to Athens. Georgia is socially quite different from Florida, and the most obvious sign of this (apart from the shotgun toting, overall wearing, 'pickup' driving farmers), is the change in radio stations that occurs as you cross the border. Thursday was a beautiful day and I was rocking along to the local station until it finally faded into distortion about 50 miles over the border. Rather than reaching for the CDs I decided to listen to some of the local stations. Well, if you're not interested in listening to some bloke sing about his dog, truck, illegitimate child or cheating girlfriend then don't bother turning the radio on. There is pretty much nothing but Country music from the time you leave Florida (except when you get close to Atlanta, then you pick up some Rap and Hip-hop). But, seeing as we were heading for Nashville, home of country music I thought I would give it a crack and try and get into it a bit - that lasted about five minutes, and when blood started running from my ears I thought enough was enough. It
Mmmmm Breakfast
Waffles, Muffins, Bagels.....is cereal supposed to be this colour? was going to be a long weekend in Nashville.
I arrived in Athens without anything interesting happening (I didn't get lost this time though). Fi went to course the next morning, but we didn't have our previous luck with the scheduled classes not finishing until about 1:00 pm. After furiously packing we hit the road heading for Nashville. Our first planned stop was Chattanooga, right on the Tennessee/Georgia border. Well, unfortunately things didn't quite go to plan. We hit the Atlanta Ring Road just at the beginning of peak hour, and what took us 30 mins on our return trip took nearly 3 hours. After some good quality, old fashioned US bumper to bumper gridlock we arrived at Chattanooga, right on dark - this sort of made a drive up 'Lookout Mountain' somewhat unnecessary. Fiona had managed to pick up the flu in the past few days so we made a quick stop at a drive-through pharmacy and proudly displayed how Australian we were by parking and walking into the store. Then we got back on the road. We arrived at Nashville at around 9pm and were somewhat surprised by how large it was. I was expecting it to
Gold Records
This is Fiona in front of one of about 5 walls of gold and platinum records. They ranged from Elvis Presley to Keith Urban to Johnny Cash. be a big country town, but it is quite a large city with a population of 500, 000 people and a CBD with quite a few high-rises. We found our hotel, had a quick bite to eat and went to bed.
Next morning we got up and booked ourselves onto a Nashville city tour - usually we keep away from these things, but given that we only had 1 day to explore, it was a pretty good way of seeing the city quickly. Our hotel offered a complimentary continental breakfast so we decided to make the most of it. Now, American continental breakfasts aren't quite the same as what we would picture in Australia. The foods on offer were - bagels, waffles, muffins, dough-nuts, sausage and gravy with biscuits (scones) etc etc. There's a photo I've attached of our delightfully nutritional breakfast. The bus picked us up at about 9 am and we headed into downtown Nashville. Unfortunately the driver left his personality at home, so the tour wasn't quite as lively as we'd hoped (he did come out with one good one-liner though, referring to Hooters Restaurant as 'daycare for men'). We did get to see some pretty
Elvis' Gold Limousine
This is Fi and I in front of Elvis' gold limousine. The interior was all plated or leafed in 24 carat gold. It even had a gold plated TV. cool things though. To celebrate Tennessee's 200th birthday, Nashville built 'Centennial Park' which is a long thin park which lies directly in front of the State Capitol building. It is full of different coloured Cherry Blossoms which were all in bloom so it was quite stunning. Along one edge of the park was a long granite wall about waist high. Carved into the wall along it's whole length were the most significant events in Tennessee's history from 1796 - 1996, it was a very unique way to showing the history of the town. We also headed out to Music Row which was where all the recording studios are - all the big names had studios there EMI, Sony, Warner Bro's etc etc. The old studios where Elvis and many other famous stars had recorded hits were all maintained in original condition. After this we headed to the Country Music Hall of Fame. This was a pretty high tech place that was presented really well - it was just a pity all that it had in it was stuff about country music. Fortunately the tour only allowed 1 hour there, which was a bit of a life saver, but there was
What the...??
Definately don't want to Study there.... some pretty cool stuff there - Elvis' gold Limousine and gold Piano, guitars and clothes worn by all the country legends. I didn't recognise most of the names, but Fiona knew a few. All in all it was a pretty good visit, and if you enjoy country music (like Fi), you could easily spend all day there.
After the tour we headed out to an area of Nashville known as Opryland. I wasn't aware of this before our visit, but Nashville is home to a live country music concert called the 'Grand Ole Opry'. Apparently this has been running as a live concert on WSM radio in Nashville since 1925 and is the oldest running program in the US. It plays a couple of nights a week at a place called the 'Grand Old Opry House' (very original). Now this really is a big deal in Nashville - apparently it is the Mecca for a Country Music performer to 'Play the Opry', so we went out to have a look. Well we arrived out there to find a big brick building - whoop-de-do. To make things worse, Fiona somehow managed to navigate us to a shopping centre as well.....things
Inside the Gaylord Opryland
This is a quick photo to give you an idea of what the 9 acres of indoor forest and lakes looked like. were looking very grim for me indeed. However not all was lost. Capitalising on the popularity of the Opry, the unfortunately named Ed Gaylord built the largest non-casino hotel right next door to the Grand Old Opry House - it is called (you're not going to believe this one) 'Gaylord Opryland'. The amusing nature of this name kept my immature mind amused for hours. The place was quite amazing though, it featured a 9 acre indoor tropical garden which had plantation style homes, lakes and eateries throughout. But wait it gets better - after leaving the 'Gaylord Opryland' (still with an amused smile on my face) we stumbled upon possibly the greatest museum of all time - 'Cooters Dukes of Hazzard Museum', complete with two General Lee's, Daisy Dukes 'Dixie' Jeep, and Deputy Rosco's Patrol Car. This place had more Dukes of Hazzard crap than I knew existed on the earth. Toy Cars, figurines, lunch boxes, bow and arrow sets, under wear, perfume - you name it the Dukes were on it and this museum had it. After finally being dragged away by Fiona we headed back to the hotel to have a beer before heading into town. Nashville really
Dukes of Hazzard Museum
Awesome......what more can I say? comes to life after dark and pretty much every pub has live entertainment of some sort. The quality of the performers was just exceptional - due to the large numbers of people who move there to try and make their break there are hundreds of high quality performers, and not all are country. Fi managed to get some boot scootin' in and we danced until the wee small hours of the morning.
We got up the next morning a little worse for wear - I had picked up a bit of Fiona's flu and the beers from the night before were not being nice to me (not nearly as nice as they were the night before anyway). This was soon fixed by a healthy American breakfast and a lot of orange juice. We checked out of the hotel and hit the road by 8:30am - first stop, the Jack Daniel's Distillery. The distillery is located in the small town of Lynchburg (population 350) and is about 50 miles off any of the major roads. It was quite a beautiful drive though, the small towns and country side of Tennessee was really interesting to see. The town itself is quite
Lynchburg - Home of Jack Daniel's
This is taken in the middle of Downtown Lynchburg - population 350. picturesque and very much like the small town America you see on TV. We bought ourselves a quick drink and headed out to the distillery for a tour. The Jack Daniel's company puts the hour long tour on for free and it really was entertaining. Our tour guide, Dave, was dressed in denim overalls and had such a broad southern accent he was really hard to understand - pretty funny though. Unfortunately for me the Orange juice at breakfast and drink we had in town caught up with me about halfway through the tour, so I spent most of the time doing the 'Bustin' for slash' dance which I'm sure will now be popular in Lynchburg at their next Line Dancing concert. Anyway, the distillery in Lynchberg is the only place in the world that produces JD. It uses natural spring water which comes through a cave system located at the back of the distillery grounds to provide all the water for the whiskey - they won't use anything else. It was quite amazing to think that every single bottle of JD in the world (and they just became to world's no 1 whiskey seller) is produced in a little
Welcome to Jack Daniel's
Is this what heaven looks like....?? town of 350 people in the middle of Tennessee. Unfortunately for us, the County Lynchberg is in is a dry County so we couldn't have any samples - and the gift shop was closed on Sunday's because of County laws, so we don't have any JD gifts for any of you....
After the tour we headed for our last stop before home - Chattanooga. Driving on the roads over here never ceases to amaze me - on the road to Chattanooga Fiona saw a bloke driving his car, smoking a cigarette, and shaving at the same time all whilst doing about 10 mph over the speed limit - impressive multitasking. We arrived at Chattanooga pretty late in the afternoon and headed straight to 'Lookout Mountain'. On a clear day apparently you can see 7 states - we had no idea what we were looking at though. Chattanooga was home to some pretty significant Civil War battles - it was time to pay Fiona back all the shopping trips I have had to endure over here. I dragged her into some dodgy museum which had a 'digital map' explaining the local area battles. We were interested to find out what
JD Tour Group
Here's a photo of our tour group that they took for us. Check out the tour guide with the beard in the front row.... a 'digital map' was, but it turned out to be a diorama with lots of little toy soldiers and they used lights and LEDs to explain how the battles occurred - wow! (not). The look of boredom on Fiona's face was priceless. But it wasn't over yet - after the museum we headed down to the battlefield itself. This was actually quite an amazing site to see - the battle fields at Chattanooga had been dedicated as a National Park in the 1890's and is one of the largest Civil War memorials in the States. They have set up a self drive of the battlefield with icons and markers to show where units were positioned and where the severe fighting took place. There were restored cannons to mark the artillery units and big piles of cannon balls to show where Generals had been killed in the fighting. The area was also littered with monuments of all sizes to the units that fought in the battles there, and there were hundreds of them. I thought this must have absolutely been boring Fiona to tears, and that it was great payback for all our shopping trips but she actually enjoyed it (she
Anyone thirsty?
All these bottles come out of one barrel of JD - Fi wouldn't let me buy one.... says she did anyway...).
After finishing the self drive tour we headed home. It had been a big trip and we were pretty tired. All in all we covered 1450 miles or 2320 km from Jacksonville to Nashville and back again.
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Chattanooga
Dan, did you see a Choo-choo in Chattanooga?