What time is it?

Well, we did a tour of Nashville yesterday. Went all over downtown. If you've been to Nashville, you know it's all hills. I'll bet I pushed Diane two miles up and down the streets in the center of town. We started out at the visiters center and then we went around the Ryman, into some of the shops, listened to some music at the bars and generally had a good time. Then we toured the Country Music Hall of Fame with its many exhibits. Right now, they're featuring an exhibit about Brenda Lee and a huge display of Hank Williams and his family story. We saw Elvis' gold Cadillac and piano and of course, the wall of gold and platinum records. The hall of inductees was very impressive.

At the visitors center, we were able to get tickets for the General Jackson Showboat. This is a dinner cruise and show on a rear drive paddle boat 300' long. It goes up and down the Cumberland river and past the night lights of downtown Nashville. They had an excellent music show tracing the flow of country music over the years and we had a great time. We had been watching the time while we were touring downtown, and we made sure to get to the boat at 5:45 to get our tickets and get in line for boarding. I went up to the window and got the tickets and we went to get in line and I asked the attendant where we should stand. He said "right here but we don't board for another hour yet". I said how can that be when we were told to be there at 6:00. He said "but it's only 5:00, now". Can you say time change? It never dawned on me that we'd be in a different time zone. So we cruised the Opry Mills mall for an hour and window shopped. Oh, well, I'd rather be early than late.

7 Points

This is the view that greeted us as we pulled back in to our site last night. We spent the day traveling from Norris Dam down I75 to I40 to here, the Seven Points Core of Engineers Campground. We are about 10 miles from the absolute center of Nashville. The campground is outstanding. The sites are large and fairly well separated and have elec. and water. Most have a second spot to park your towed vehicle or boat. The roads and parking pads are all paved and leveling is not a problem. Like Jordan, there isn't a bad site here. It's not as quiet as Norris. We're in the landing pattern for the Nashville airport and we often hear trains in the distance, but it's not bad at all and the beauty of the campground more than makes up for it. We are across the road from the lake. I would have gotten a lakeside site but they were all taken when I was reserving. When we pulled in yesterday at 2:00, there was a line of 6 or 7 rigs waiting to dump. After we got here, we decided to go out a find a Walmart to stock up on some things. So I used the Garmin to tell me where it was. When it came up, it didn't look quite right but I figured I'd try it out. Well, it took us about 20 miles away when there is one about 6 miles away. So we wound up on the south side of town and I had forgotten to save our campsite as a favorite. No problem, I'll just type it in. Sure enough, it says 7 points campground, a away we go. It lead us into a run down residential neighborhood nearer the center of town and said "here you are". So I said forget this, I'll use dead reckoning and get there myself. So I took us into the center of Nashville so Diane could see what the town looked like. Last night, there was a Titans game in town and the center of town was wall to wall people. So we ran around in circles a little bit and then hit the highway back to camp, just in time to watch the sun go down across the street. Our first stop will be in to the visitors center to get a view of what we might see. There's too much for one trip, so we've got to sort it out. Hard to balance sight-seeing and relaxing, but we'll manage, even if it means staying here a little longer.

Off to the Museum

Yesterday, we visited the Museum of Appalachia for their Fall Heritage Festival. This is a living history museum dedicated to preserving the artifacts of the cultural heritage of this area in their original context. It's the effort of John Rice Irwin and is very impressive. The festival adds the presence of craft vendors, music performance and living history demonstrations to the usual fare of the museum. It covers quite an area and draws thousands of people over four days each fall. We had a super time and just barely managed to miss a terrific rainstorm that came through just after we left.
We are staying at Norris Dam state park. It's a very pretty spot on top of a mountain and the campground is very quiet. Last night we had quite a thunderstorm blow through and it rained for a long time. Curley was looking for some place to hide as the thunder roared and the lightning flashed. Today is for resting.

False Starts

At last, we're out on the road. We got away from the house yesterday at 10:45 and pulled into WinnGray Campground at 3:45. The rainy morning had cleared by the time we left and we had beautiful weather the whole way. An overnite stop with full HU's cost us 30$. The guy that checked us in was great and led us right to a pull thru spot under the trees. Life is good! I got us all set up and walked into the camper and that's when Diane said "I think I left my pills at home", not all of them, we had the box full, just the bottle that we had scrambled to get on Tuesday that she can't live without. We wound up driving back to Burlington on Wed. nite to retrieve the pills, took a nap and then hit the road back to the campsite at 5:45 and got there at 9:15 this morning. Then we packed everything up and trekked on to Norris Dam State park arriving here at 1:00. So it can only get better. This park is on the top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere. The campground is better than Grayson but not as good as Jordan. Still, it's gorgeous here and dead quiet. Plus three bars of signal so I can sit here tethered with my phone to let you all know what's going on. Tomorrow is the Museum of Appalachia Fall Festival and then Saturday is recovery day.

The Big Trip

I guess I should start out by outlining our BIG TRIP. We're taking this trip to celebrate our new found freedom caused by my retirement. We've never camped for more than a week at a time and never more than a days drive from home. On this trip we'll be gone 6-8 weeks and travel over 2500 miles. We plan on leaving Oct. 7 and taking two days to get to Norris Dam State Park in Tenn. That will put us just up the road from The Museum Of Appalachia for their Fall Heritage Homecoming Festival. We plan to spend a couple of days there and then on Sunday, move to the Seven Points COE facility outside of Nashville. We'll stay there for five nights seeing Nashville and then move out to start down the Natchez Trace Parkway. Its 444 miles long and we'll be taking lots of side trips. One big side trip will be to Memphis to sample the BBQ ribs. Others will include Shiloh Battlefield. We'll continue to Natchez and then to Baton Rouge and then to New Orleans. From NO we'll come back up through Alabama to Birmingham and Huntsville and cross back over into Tennessee and stay around Chatanooga for a few days. Then back home.

I'm excited at the prospect. Also scared at the challenge of all that unknown. I don't want to plan any more than I have to but my biggest fear is not having a place to park at night. So, I'll do some reserving on the road but try not to get locked into any hard schedule. After all, the idea is to relax and see some of this great land of ours. I have to fight against my engineering bent that compels me to plan it all out. I do want to have a pretty good idea of what there is to see as we go along. I don't want to get back and discover that I was only a few miles from some place I really would have liked to have seen.

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Cheap camping

As we prepare for our big trip, I went and got a National Parks Senior Pass. It used to be called the Golden Age pass. With this, I can get a reduced rate at COE parks and some state parks.
For example, I've reserved a stay at a COE park outside of Nashville for $10 a night. That sure beats the $52 a night the Nashville KOA wanted. It works with state parks in LA as well. There, I can stay for $9 a night. Of course the trade off is usually no WiFi or full hookup. But they have dump stations and I can get wireless with my phone, so it'll work out.

First Post

My first attempt at setting up a blog.