Blogs from Tennessee, United States, North America - page 11

Hello from Kinshasa....yes, I have to admit, late I am when it comes to blogging. My flight from Lubumbashi was a good three hours late yesterday, but as always, I'm still happy to have arrived. There has been only two planes crashing this week in Congo DRC, so anytime I'm on a domestic flight, the only thing that truly count, is simply to land! Nashville, we did drive through the city and slept not far from the airport, but that's all I can tell you about downtown Nashville. One more time, let me stress that I don't know anything about country music and that I don't really need to go through that part of my musical background. This means, we may have driven through the streets of very famous, or not, music institutions, this was not ... read more

Our original plans had called for visiting a couple of caves in the Gatlinburg area, but we quickly realized that we were in Gatlinburg, and it would be senseless to pass up an opportunity to explore the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in order to see some more caves! When we checked with the Park Ranger last night, he suggested 3 hikes: 1.3 miles to Laurel Falls, 1.3 miles to Grotto Falls, and 0.5 miles to Clingman's Dome. He suggested we do Clingman's Dome in the afternoon so that the heat of the day would burn off the fog and make the visibility better. So after a quick breakfast at the hotel, that is what we set out to do. The weather report called for temperatures in the upper 80's to low 90's, so we would ... read more

After debating on whether or not to even go to this event, I decided to just go for it. Waking up at 5 AM after having only 2 hours of sleep (from too much excitement), I ate breakfast, chugged a much needed cup of coffee, and started my 2 1/2 hour trek to Nashville Music City Center (NMCC) in Nashville. The first half of my journey started out with heavy fog with a gorgeous view of the large full moon that would peek through the fog every so often. As I neared Nashville, I grabbed food and another cup of coffee from McDonald's, as well as gassed up so I wouldn't have to deal with it when it was time to head home. I arrived at NMCC and ended up just parking at the venue for ... read more

We started off with a authentic southern breakfast at Nashville Biscuit house. The Biscuits and Sausage gravy were tasty as expected. Jamie even got to try some grits and country gravy although the boujee Jamie was not into either. We had way too much to eat once again on our vacation. Then it was off to Memphis. We had some time to kill before stopping for the reason we were visiting Memphis (more food) so we instead went to the biggest bass pro shop I have ever seen that is housed in a giant pyramid. Mike purchased a very high class trucker hat and we got moon pie's. Was a good way to waste 90 min or so as our bellies made space. Then we are off to Central BBQ for the Memphis specialty. We had ... read more

We decided to spend an extra day in Nashville at the KOA campground. They had a shuttle that took us downtown to where the "action" was and we had a great time. We did a backstage tour of the Ryman Auditorium, home of the "Grand Ole Opry". It was a great tour with a tour guide who had story after story. We have a new appreciation for the country music legends. We enjoyed walking on Broadway St. going into the bars and listening to some great talent...those who are trying to "make it" here in Nashville I suppose. We especially liked the Jimmy Buffet Margarita Ville bar. They had a great female singer. We also enjoyed the famous "Tootsies". This has a back alley entrance from the Ryman Auditorium where performers would slip out to while ... read more