Music City - Nashville, TN
Nashville, TN
After four days in Memphis where else would you go to but Nashville, Tennessee which is locally known as Music City. This time we stuck to the rather boring interstate highway rather than local roads. We are always amazed at how many trucks are on the road (yes trucks keep a country moving) but the speed at which they travel is staggering. It is not uncommon to see a convoy of about ten coming towards you (yes it is at least a four to six lane highway with a grass division between directions) with about that many coming up beside us. As much as the middle lane (when it is a six lane highway) is the lane of choice to get out of the way of joining traffic, having two trucks thundering past us at 70 miles per hour is just a bit claustrophobic. Nashville attracts thousand of visitors all year and this of course reflects in available accommodation. There are a number of camping grounds, all a fair distance from the city and no state parks close by. Nashville is the capital of Tennessee, with a population of around 650,000, and is a little smaller than Memphis. Surprisingly different from Memphis is the fact that over 60% are European American and less than 30% African American. We stayed fifteen miles from the centre of town but with 6-8 lane highways into the city centre it only took about twenty minutes. We initially booked for three nights, then decided we were enjoying the area so much we would stay another couple then eventually booked for the seventh night as well. It is the longest we have stayed anywhere on this trip. We continue to be about the smallest unit in a camping ground, resulting in lots of questions and looks from other campers. Many people live in their rigs, or spend many months a year in them (well we have had over three months in our small one) so for comfort etc choose the biggest rigs they can afford. Let me add that Peter eyes many of the towing vehicles (like the trucks ranging from 150 to 450) with a degree of envy. Another thing we have been surprised at is that it appears it is legal for a vehicle to tow say a fifth wheeler with a boat then hitched behind that. It is certainly a combined long vehicle when it overtakes! What do you do in Nashville but listen to country music so we have continued with the theme "it is not all about the sights but about the atmosphere" as this is even more so in Nashville than Memphis. We checked out the visitors centre and a very helpful lady soon gave us a list of places she thought we may enjoy visiting. Broadway in Nashville is busy for what seems like twenty four hours a day with people wandering in and out of the bars and each bar has live music. There is no cover charge, you can enter and just listen from doorway or wall, take a seat, order food and drinks and just stay a while. Drinks and food are reasonably priced, the bar staff and definitely the bands are paid by tips. The tip container for the band is handed around about hourly and as you leave it is "expected" that you will tip the band even if you have just stayed a short while. A wad of $1 and $5 notes is very helpful. As drinks are paid for a 20% tip is handed to the bar staff. We soon chose a favourite honky tonk bar - Roberts Western World which is open from 11 am to 3 am seven days a week. We called in for lunch on our first day and didn't leave until late afternoon and returned again for a while in the evening and many times during the week we stayed in town. Now for me that is hugely different - bars are not my usual place to visit. I must say I much preferred the whole area during the week days than in the week-end when it was crowded with younger and often intoxicated younger people. Besides the bars there are a number of shops on Broadway, the majority with a cowboy theme, although Peter did hunt down an ice cream and sweet shop! We didn't spend our whole week in Nashville on Broadway. I was keen to visit the music hall of fame and museum but did I ever muck that one up. We headed off from the caravan with the plan of doing so and a quick check provided an address for the GPS. We parked, and even as we approached the museum it didn't feel right. We asked the girl as we went in was this the music hall of fame and was assured so we paid the $US42 and in we went. The facility was appearing more and more like a warehouse converted. Yes there were displays and exhibits but very few were of musicians we knew. We soon realised that we were in the "Musicians Hall of Fame and Musician" and not the "Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum". Yes they are both in Nashville but very, very different. This one related to the supporting bands etc. Oh well, we saw it, it wasn't that interesting and certainly wasn't worth the money, in our opinion. So after that it was better to wander down and listen to music for the afternoon. Friday was a special day. Cam had booked for us to go to a backstage tour of the Grand Ole Ophry and then to attend the show in the evening. The Grand Ole Ophry is a weekly country music show which commenced in 1925 as a one hour barn dance radio show. The show still airs twice weekly, on Friday and Saturday nights from 7 pm to 9 pm and is regularly tuned into by many American country music fans. Membership to the Grand Ole Ophry is honoured by country musicians. New Zealand (and dare I say Australia as they like to claim him) has a representative member in Keith Urban. The backstage tour certainly helped us to have an understanding of the importance of the show to Americans. The tour is held every fifteen minutes and about twenty people are guided through the massive purpose built auditorium and back stage to the dressing rooms etc. Back in 2010 the auditorium was badly flooded to a level of more than four feet covering the stage and the ground floor area. They are proud that they never missed a show which were held back in the Ryman Auditorium in the city where the show had historically been held. We were advised to arrive early for the show which began at 7 pm. We were parked and walking in by 6.15 amongst huge crowds. It was just as well the tickets had allocated seating! We were seated upstairs and when we took our seats the pre-show entertainment had already commenced. The show is in four segments with a host/compere for each section and then during the change over the advertisements are spoken. There were large screens which definitely helped to see the stars better. We were definitely there to enjoy the country music and even though we didn't know any of the guest artists we thoroughly enjoyed it. We decided that we really should see something more than country music so headed to the Bicentennial Capital Mall State Park which is right in the city and from which there is a great view of the State Capital building. The local historic society had a week-end display on so we enjoyed seeing that - we could have thought we were back in Huntly NZ checking over Malcolm's toys (our daughter's father-in-law). The highlight of this park are the fifty bell towers which ring every hour. There is also a war memorial which is pretty impressive. Across the road from the park is an indoor and outdoor market where the farmers market is held. By the time we got there most of the stalls were finished for the day but the indoor food area and twenty or so food trucks were very busy. It was really interesting to see the variety of food trucks and the queues of people lined up. Definitely a market here for food trucks. Saturday night we decided we should visit Broadway again (as we had already missed Friday so couldn't miss two days in a row). The place was crowded as you would expect. To go in any of the bars you had to queue and believe it or not, even at our old age, we had to show ID! We walked the length, checked out the lolly and the boot shops and finally found a bar where we could actually get in and find a table. We stayed an hour or so but that was enough for us. The cycling taverns were in abundance as partying groups made their way around town. Sunday was time to correct my earlier mistake and we made our way to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. What a difference and we easily spent over three hours viewing the exhibits and listening to music. Elvis's gold Cadillac was on display. We can highly recommend this museum. Monday was our last day so we decided that all the young week-end crowd would either be at work or have left town so we headed back to Broadway for one last visit. It was certainly different - a much older crowd happily enjoying the sun strolling down the street, stopping off at various places. We visited the Honky Tonk Bar which is three floors of tables with a live band on each floor. With the sun streaming in through the open sliders it was a pleasant way to spend an afternoon. So finished our visit to Nashville. Fall is definitely the season and we have left summer behind. The nights were cold in Nashville as the temperatures dropped to the mid thirties (about 1 deg C), but the days were still lovely and sunny although there was a cold wind at times. Time to move on. As we travelled from Nashville to Cosby on the edge of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park (both still in the State of Tennessee) as we reached the summit of a range the clocks moved forward one hour. We have left Central Time Zone behind and we are now back on Eastern Standard Time. It was amazing as the clock changed from just before 12 noon to nearly 1 pm Peter's tummy reacted and it was definitely lunch time. We will now have a few days in the Great Smoky Mountains before meeting up with Cam near Blowing Rock in North Carolina for the week-end before we return to Durham. We will only have a short time left in the US then as we prepare to fly out on Sunday, 1 November.