Nashville

Went out to the Smoky Mountains. Tennessee’s (and North Carolina) natural woodlands is absolutely stunning. Sad to say though that much of the “smoke” that is seen today in the mountains aren’t pure clean clouds, but instead trapped gasses that we’ve released into our atmosphere. However, this day the air quality was pretty good. And my favorite part? The mountains are much cooler than the rest of the state. Even though it was a brisk 68 degrees, I still chose to run around in my tank top. I enjoyed the cool air caressing the bare skin of my back (do I make that sound sexy or what?). Due to the contrast of the rest of the trip, I decided to enjoy every ounce of coolness I could get.

We drove through Pigeon Forge. It reminds me of Orlando or a family friendly Vegas with all the activities you can do. We didn’t have time to stop however, because it was still a two hour drive to Nashville.

About 4 miles from our hotel in Nashville traffic came to a near standstill. The blinking red of the roadway emergency light was flashing, so we tuned in to the radio to see what had happen. All we could figure was that all lanes going our direction were closed due to an “incident.” We took our trusty GPS and tried to find al alternate route. We managed to find a pretty good one through a backcountry road. We hear a car lightly tap their horn at as us we turn a corner and we stop in our tracks. Ahead is a police car perpendicular to our own flashing its lights and a large chunk of tree blocking the roadway behind it. The best we can figure is that the lightening storm that we had seen up ahead earlier had passed through and taken the tree down with it. We let the GPS guide us turn after turn through a residential neighborhood. I noticed another down tree, but this one didn’t interfere with the road system. Now, I’m good with a map, but I don’t know if I could have created this route to our hotel. Next thing I know, we’re pulling up into the hotel parking lot thanks to our handy GPS system. (And no, I didn’t forget to praise it!).

Of course, no trip out to Nashville would be complete without visiting the Grand Ole Opry. The venue is beautiful. Nashville’s culture and character as a whole is charming. There’s so much history here and so many opportunities to enjoy it.