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After our boat ride, we headed back on I-40 East and drove right out of Tennessee into North Carolina.
We are staying at the home of the uncle of our friend Jenni. It was billed as a “cabin” so we were thinking it would be somewhat rustic, but it is anything but.
And this is our view out the window this morning.
Awesome!
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Yesterday, we went on a short river cruise up the Cumberland River on the General Jackson Showboat
for lunch and a show by Tim Watson called Fiddlin’ Around, which was an hour or so of music and comedy
that we all enjoyed. Tim put on a good show, though apparently not much different than what it was three years ago. After the show, we bought a CD of a live show, and Tim gladly posed for a picture with the kids
When we listened to the CD in the car, the main thing that has apparently changed is that he dropped some Michael Jackson jokes. I’d bet this was a recent change. But again, not to complain – the man is a good entertainer. We heard one couple tell the band that they enjoyed the show more than the Grand Ole Opry show they were at the previous night (featuring Carrie Underwood among others, if you recall…)
As I mentioned earlier, my pictures were uploading to flickr very slowly last night, and when I woke up, I was not surprised to see that the upload had failed. I started it up again, and it failed on the second picture. After a couple more iterations, I decided to take another tack, and connect to a different SSID, as there were many available and provided by the hotel. That seemed to fix it — the remaining few photos uploaded in minutes rather than hours, and the rest of the web sites I was using worked much more smoothly.
The problem felt like the LAN connection to that particular WAP must have been dropping packets (and lots!), either due to a bad cable or a bad interface. So if you’re ever at the Comfort Inn on Elm Hill Pike in Nashville, avoid BBHWIRELESS_18.
Overall, our experience with hotel wifi has been good. Performance hasn’t always been the best, but the availability has been ubiquitous, and as opposed to a few years ago, always free. The only exception was the non-national-chain sportsman-oriented motel we stayed in outside of DeSmett, South Dakota.
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I didn’t write anything last night because I couldn’t think of a good title. Well, that and the fact that my pictures are uploading slower in this hotel than they do through my mobile connection. But still cheaper, to be sure.
Here we are in Nashville! We spent the night in a Comfort Inn, and for some reason they gave us a rate $30 cheaper than when we made the reservation in the afternoon. Woohoo!
Being rather naive about Nashville, we didn’t know what to go see other than the Grand Ole Opry House , so we went there first.
Turns out that Carrie Underwood (a family favorite) was performing that night, so with no expectations, we went and asked if there were tickets available, and…
there were not. Nor were there tickets for the afternoon show, nor for the backstage tour. But as I said, no surprise — it was a Saturday after all.
Instead, Susan got us tickets for a riverboat performance for Sunday, which should be fun.
I would guess that originally, there was no huge mall across the street from the Opry, but there is now. Lacking any other plan, we went and had an early dinner at the fancy Aquarium restaurant in the mall.
We thought we might take in the new Harry Potter movie after dinner, but it was voted down in favor of something less scary — G-Force in 3D. While the movie wasn’t great, the 3D was pretty fun. So while to the rest of the world, Nashville is known for its music, for us it will always be remembered for its 3D movies 🙂
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We stopped at a nice rest area for lunch. We made PB&J sandwiches for the kids and tuna & potato salad sandwiches, since we lacked any other dressing.
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This morning marks our fourth week on the road. We are headed to Nashville to see the sights and learn more about country music.
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Having spent the afternoon in Tennessee, we crossed over into Southaven, Mississippi and spent the night in a Quality Inn there, just to add to our state tally. Currently, it stands at 18 plus one Canadian province: Massachusetts, New York, Ontario, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi.
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And we are going to Graceland.
What else to do in Memphis? Well, we decided to do one of the more obvious things, and take in some Americana. We arrived at about 4:45, certain that it would be closing (flashbacks of the Henry Ford museum…) shortly, and we’d be left taking pictures of the exterior from however close you could get without paying admission. But we were wrong! They were happy to take our $84 and let us go on a recorded audio guided tour. And we had a great time, aside from the funkiness of going around sort of together but with headphones on, listening independently to the tour.
Turns out, Elvis earned lots of gold and platinum records
and had lots of funky clothes
Who knew?
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Thanks to Matt’s and Caryn’s suggestion, we stopped at Mud Island today, where there is a scale model of the Mississippi river that you can walk along (and in!).
It’s about half a mile long, and the water gets to about a foot deep or so in places. It is one of our favorite places we’ve visited thus far. At the very end is a big wading pool, and a bigger one representing the Gulf of Mexico, in which you can rent paddle boats, though we didn’t.
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We re-crossed the Mighty Mississipp’ today,
and are (therefore) back in the east. Only this time, we did it much further south, on I-40 at the border between Arkansas and Tennessee.