Music City, USA

The trip from Sevierville to Nashville was smooth and uneventful, making it the 16th RV site relocation since we bought the trailer. The towing odometer in Ruby is up to 4,093 miles, and I expect we will eventually have more towing miles than driving miles before this journey concludes.

Our current location is the Grand Ole RV Campground (can’t figure out where that name came from 😏), a few miles to the north of Nashville. It isn’t a scenic campground, but the location serves us.

On Easter afternoon, we headed south of Nashville to Arrington Vineyards to enjoy their food, wines, and two different music groups (Jazz and Bluegrass). Though chilly and windy, it was a nice afternoon.

Our first tourist adventure the next day was to Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage. I have to admit a lapse in my knowledge of Presidential homes, because I was not aware of this site. Mt Vernon, yes, Monticello, yes, but not this one.

The estate is huge, at over 1,000 acres, and the Greek Revival style of the house was impressive. This is not a reconstructed house, but is the same that Jackson lived in at the time of his death. I was surprised that it had escaped being razed during the civil war.

The next day we played the typical Nashville tourists, heading into town to see the sights. We caught a Lyft in so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the downtown traffic and parking, and we bought tickets to the Hop-On Hop-Off Trolley to make the loop through town.

Our first stop was at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. This was a very enjoyable, and we ended up staying over 2-hours as we went through all of the exhibits and listened to the sound clips from the earliest folk music to the current day.

Next, we jumped onto the trolley and got off at the Farmer’s Market, which is a large food court with about every genre of food a person would want. We ended up at the Greek counter and spilt a Gyros salad and some dolmades (stuffed grape leaves).

After getting stuffed ourselves, we walked a block over to the Tennessee State Museum and spent some time wandering through their exhibits, which was a timeline of natural and human history in the Tennessee area.

Back on to the trolley, where we went past the Marathon Motor Works, The Parthenon (an actual size replica of the original temple in Athens, Greece), and many music recording studios on Music Row. As we rode past another landmark, The Musica Statue, the trolley driver mentioned that the round-about was now called the round-a-butt by the locals for obvious reasons.

We got off the trolley at the final stop and wandered the downtown area until we ended up at the FGL House for some great pulled pork nachos, drinks, and live music, before heading back to the campground for yet more live music.

Wednesday we sat for even more live music at the campground, making it 3-days in a row of live music. I think that is a record for our marriage. We are heading off to the Paducah KY area today for three nights.