Back to the South for one more Dose of Southern Livin’ Then its Back to Good Ol' Coloradeh!

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After experiencing the windy city, Matt and I decided we had enough time to head back down south to visit the beautiful states of Kentucky and Tennessee. I had been to Kentucky before for the Derby, and I really wanted to show Matt Churchill Downs and some more of horse country (aka HEAVEN for me!) We drove only about 4 hours to Louisville and had no idea what we were going to do once we got there. It was a Saturday night so we knew something had to be going on. Matt was on his handy-dandy iPhone looking up things to do when he came across something that sounded pretty entertaining to say the least. Every year, three weeks before the Kentucky Derby, there is a huge festival that hosts the opening ceremonies. This festival has one of the biggest fireworks shows in the world, a huge air show with the Army, Navy and Air Force there and tons of fun stuff to do at the carnival. There are about 750,000 people who attend this festival every year. WOW, how had we not ever heard of this before? And to our surprise it was going on the very night we were arriving in Louisville. We arrived in town and found a parking spot after a few horns were honked and profanities thrown, and were off to the festival. It was pretty overwhelming, I don’t think Ive ever been around a group of people that large! We grabbed some homemade fries and chicken fingers and went to find a spot to see this fireworks show that everyone was talking about. The fireworks are set off over the Ohio river on two bridges that are right next to each other. Before they were set off, we got to see the two huge boats that brought the fireworks in, each carrying 350 tons of fireworks. We somehow found probably the best seats possible along the river. We were right between the two bridges, sitting on the ledge of the river with our legs hanging over the side. There were no human bodies in front of us, just pure action! I don’t know how we got so lucky, everyone else had been hanging out there since 10 a.m. and we got there at around 8 p.m.! I guess that’s what happens when your smooth and look like Justin Timberlake (where would I be without Matt?! ) We sat down and had our little dinner of French fries, chicken fingers and PB&J sandwiches (my road trip specialitay!) Little did we know what we were in store for. I felt like I was 5 years old again watching those fireworks, they made me nervous and extremely excited all at the same time, I think I peed my pants al little bit. (Mostly I was nervous because I was afraid of my hair catching on fire due to how freakin close we were!) We posted a video on this blog above (^) if you would like to check it out. I think watching the video will do the fireworks more justice than my trying to describe them to you. This made me want to stay for the Derby so bad! It is tough to describe, but it was basically 30 minutes of a grand finale of fireworks. After it was over, we made our way back to our car to make sure nobody had broken into it (we parked in a questionable area) which they hadn’t (woo!) and then we decided to go to the downtown party scene to get dessert… I know we’re too crazy to handle sometimes. (Weve found it hard to be able to rationalize spending $10 per drink on this trip, I guess weve spent too much money on dessert!) We though that by doing this we would avoid the huge crowd of ¾ of a million people trying to leave the grounds all at once. We were wrong. After about an hour of checking out the downtown area, we headed back to our car to go find a spot to set up our camp for the night. Matt accidentally missed an exit on the highway, no big deal right? Wrong. That little mistake led us to be stuck in a 2 hour line of traffic with no way out. The cops had that city blocked off in all sorts of places, mostly just to prevent people from getting to their homes before 3 a.m. I decided. After taking about 2 hours of this, both of us were in pretty foul moods and decided to pull off the side of the road and camp out in an apartment complex’s parking lot. I think the only time either one of us has gotten mad at the other one is when we get into some sort of a traffic or directions predicament. We just take out our frustration on each other, but 10 minutes later were over it. Anyways, we pulled into this apartment complex and had a great night’s sleep in the car (as usual! That car has been just amazing! If it had a shower attached I could probably live out of that thing for quite a while.) The next morning we were off for Nashville, Tennessee!
Now neither matt nor I are huge country buffs, but we were still really excited to see where all this honky tonk originated from and go listen to some country music for one time in our lives. We pulled into town and had a little break down. Im actually a little disappointed in us, but we stayed in a hotel room. Yes, after my talking up how great the back of our car was, we caved in. Mostly just because neither one of us had taken a shower in a few days and we wanted to go out that night and look like we hadn’t been living out of our car. We chose a nice Hampton Inn, with a delicious warm breakfast included, and a free gym for me to use the next morning. After eating out at Carrabbas (just in case you don’t know this about Matt and I, we both think that Carrabas is the most amazing restaurant that has ever been created, so it was only a matter of time before we ate at one during the trip, even though we tried really hard to not eat at chain restaurants…besides McDonalds and Chick-Fil-A. (If you ever eat there, get the Chick Bryan…AMAAAZING!) (And sorry for using so many partenthesis, I guess I think theyre fun.)) We rested up and showered in our beautiful hotel room and headed out for a night on the town in Nashville! We went to a bar called “Tootsie’s Wild Orchid” which looked pretty famous. There were pictures of famous people all over the wall who had been there before. This bar has live bands playing every night, and they’re all people trying to make it big so what we heard was pretty darn good! This bar had two levels with two different bands to pick from. Downstairs was a pretty good country western band, but again Matt and I don’t like country western, so we decided to go upstairs and listen to this woman vocalist sing classic rock songs. She was amazing! She had a band with her, and we hung out there for a few hours throwing out requests and joking around with the band, while rocking out at the same time. We had a blast! We headed back to the hotel that night and had an amazing nights sleep in an actual bed. The next day we toured around Nashville a little bit, but found that most of what Nashville is known for happens at night. We ended up grabbing some delicious subs at a local sub shop and headed out for our next destiation…TULSA!
The drive to Tulsa is about 10 hours total, so we decided to just drive half way there that day and continue our drive the next day. I was really excited because two of my great girlfriends live in Tulsa. I was only going to be able to see one of them, but I still couldn’t wait nonetheless. We drove about 5 hours to Little Rock Arkansas. There wasn’t too much to see there so we just went to dinner and rented a movie to watch in the back of the car. We rented “Religulous,” a very good movie if your in the mood to think about something as confusing as religion! (Just as a side note, Little Rock LOOVES Bill Cliton!) We woke up the next morning and headed out for Tulsa. My friend Katie lives there with her fiancé, Johnny. I was so excited to see them! I studied abroad with Katie and another girl named Kelley who lives there. Unfortunately Kelley was too busy with school and other things to be able to hang out, but Matt and I had a terrific time with Katie! Her and Johnny will be getting married in a couple months and Im really excited to not only be there, but also to be one of Katie’s bridesmades! We all met up and went to see the site where they will be getting married, and then went out to dinner. We decided to have the “family” experience of going to the Olive Garden (don’t you just hate those commercials!?) It was delish! Then we rented Kingpin, since Matt was the only one who had seen it, and he’s always making references to it that I don’t understand! Matt and Johnny smoked cigars while Katie and I caught up, and then we hung out and drank beers and watched the movie. It was a great night. I wish all of these great friends of mine would move to Denver! It was the perfect way to end our road trip.
Now we are on our way back from Tulsa to Denver. Now I don’t want to make any of our friends and family sad by saying this, but we reeeealllly don’t want to come back. This trip has been the time of our lives! Were both so tempted to just keep the car in drive and head over to the west coast, but, sadly enough we need to get back to the real world. We are both very excited to see our friends and family again, though. Plus Im sure it will only be a matter of time until we take our next adventure. Weve had an absolute blast, and were so glad that people are actually reading our blog and following us on our travels!
Its hard to sum up our trip in only a few sentences, because there is so much that we saw and experienced. Every day has been so different and meaningful, its tough to write and describe about everything that’s happened. The stupid little things that have happened are probably what will stick with us the most. All of our nonsense debates on the road to fill time, the strange people we met, the people we stayed with, sleeping in a car, getting ready for the day in local bathrooms, going out of our way to find Chick-Fil-A’s, singing Conway Twitty’s “Hello Darlin” pretty much every day, living off of PB&J, all the inside jokes, seeing an unusual amount of cars on fire, all those damn tolls, yelling at the GPS, and many more that might be too inappropriate to mention. Lets just say that this road trip has been the champion of all road trips, and that it brought Matt and I even closer that we were before, even though I didn’t think that was possible. Cheers to you, US of A! We’re glad to be back in Denver, the best damn City of ‘em all.

9,200 miles total = 9,200 miles of memories!

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Photos

Opening Derby Ceremonies!
We were amazed!!! Who doesnt love some great pyrotechnics?!

Rockin it at Tootsies
Kati getin her rock on at Tootsies Wild Orchid

Churchill Downs
Kati was in Heaven!

Mammoth Caves
Matt and I 250 feet under ground

Formation
Some of the formations of Mammoth Cave