Thursday, July 26th, we loaded into Ray’s car and left the park after lunch for some exploring and geocaching in the area. The campground we are in is adjacent to the Natchez Trace and our first stop was on the Parkway at MP 280 was the Meriweather Lewis Memorial. Lewis was the leader of the famous Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804- 1806 which blazed a trail from St. Louis all the way to the Pacific Northwest. After the expedition then President Jefferson appointed Lewis the Governor of the recently acquired Louisiana Territory and he settled down in St. Louis.
The official cause of death was concluded to be suicide, but many have never accepted that finding and feel that he was killed at the hands of another. At
the time he was being investigated by the government under then President Madison’s administration over misappropriation of funds as Governor of the Louisiana
Territory. The stress of this investigation is pointed to as being the reason for the suicide. Some even believe that there was a far reaching conspiracy involving Lewis’ knowledge of malfeasance by former President Jefferson and that he was assassinated at the direction of the President. Several efforts have been made to have Lewis’ body exhumed and examined with modern forensic methods, however, since he is buried in a National Park Memorial the Park Service must give it’s approval and it has steadfastly denied access to the site for any investigation of the body.After spending some time at the Lewis site we went into nearby Hohenwald for some caching. We found three caches fairly quickly, but did get one DNF too. After caching we stopped at the Walmart store to do some shopping. Both the Babcocks and us needed a few things. After shopping we headed back to the RV park. Later the Babcocks came over for cocktails and then we had dinner together in our coach. Jackie had made a batch of chicken legs which had been cooking in the crock pot all day. We had a great dinner, talked for a while and then the Babcocks went to their coach and we relaxed the rest of the evening.
Friday, July 27th, the four of us left the coach about 10:00 for some geocaching. We had discovered a geocaching “power trail” on U.S. Highway 43 a few miles east of the campground and we were going to do a part of it. A power trail is a series of caches, usually put out by the same person or team, generally very close together and usually fairly easy to locate. This series consisted of 101 separate caches, all on the southbound side of the road and most only seven or eight hundred feet apart. We didn’t have the time or ambition to do the entire series, so we started in the middle with cache number 70 and started south. With me driving, Ray jumping out of the car every 800 feet, grabbing the cache and handing it off to Suzie and Jackie in the backseat who signed the logs. We gave the cache back to Ray, he hid it again and we were off to the next cache. Rarely more than two minutes per cache. Bottom line, we managed to get 34 caches, with no DNFs, in less than two hours. Not our best one day total, we once got 47 caching with Peggy and Vernon, but we were out all day with them. This was by far the best two hour total. Only 32 of the caches were part of the series, the other two were just regular caches that happened to be close to the series we were working.
A really odd thing that happened is that while we were driving to the starting point for our caching Ray just mentioned in conversation that he wondered when we would
start to see Amish people on the roads in their buggies. We all agreed that it would probably not be until when we got further north up into Indiana, which we knew had a substantial Amish population. Not an hour later we are driving down Highway 43, grabbing caches, when we approach a town called Ethridge, Tennessee. There driving along the side of the road is an Amish buggy! Turns out Ethridge is home to a large Amish colony and they were all over the place. Talk about being wierded out. When we got to the last cache in the series it was lunch time so we drove back north towards Ethridge where we found a place called Rick’s BBQ. It didn’t look like much at first as it was inside of a gas station and convenience store. You ordered your food at the counter and then took it to a little dining room where they had some booths and tables set up. Turns out to be some of the best pulled pork BBQ any of us have eaten, certainly the best we have had on this trip. A little later research showed that they had several locations around the Middle Tennessee area. I can highly recommend Rick’s BBQ if you find yourself in any of the many small towns in Middle Tennessee that have a location. It was so good that both Ray and I bought two pounds of the pulled pork to go so we could put it in the freezer.
After lunch we drove to some of the swap meets we had seen along the road while we were caching. Several of them had Amish folks among the participants, both selling and shopping, and there was a lot of Amish stuff for sale, along with a lot of junk. We shopped for an hour or so before getting back in the car and heading back to the RV park.
We got back to the park and relaxed for while before going over to the Babcock’s coach for happy hour. Ray then served a nice spaghetti and meatballs dinner. Jackie made some garlic escargots for her and Ray, the only two of our group who like them. We had a great dinner and good conversation before heading back to our coach to relax and watch the opening ceremonies for the Olympics.
Saturday, July 28th, the four of us loaded in our car and left the park about 1:00 for what we like to call an “Elks Pub Crawl” around the local area. We find two or more Elks Lodges in an area that we believe are going to be open on a given day and then spend an afternoon of visiting lodges and collecting pins. In this case my online research showed that there were three lodges in our general area of Tennessee, Lawrenceburg, Pulaski and Columbia that were all open on Saturday. All of the lodges were within a thirty or forty mile radius, so we made our plans and set out on our crawl. We have done these several times in the past in various areas of the country, but this would be the first time for the Babcocks.
Our first stop was the Elks Lodge in Lawrenceburg, the first large town southeast of our campground. Lawrenceburg has a population of a little under 11,000 and is primarily a support community for local farming and ranching. It’s biggest cultural claim to fame is that David Crockett lived here for a few years in the early 1800's, built a mill on the banks of the local creek and served as a County Commissioner and Justice of the Peace. After his property flooded he moved to west Tennessee. David Crockett State Park. a large Tennessee State Park, is located on his old mill property. There is an annual gathering in the park during Crockett days when role players set up camp for a week and live as they did in the early 1800's.
We found the Elks Lodge, Lawrenceburg Lodge 2206 in a very nice building on the south side of town. There were several people at the bar already and they and the bartender were very cordial and friendly. The lodge bought the first round of drinks and we ended up having two because you can’t take a free drink and then just leave. We chatted with a couple of the members, including the Exalted Ruler, and found that the lodge had a membership of just under 300. We were able to get a lodge pin for our banner and after our second drink we left for our next stop. We almost didn’t get a pin, but the Exalted Ruler searched for ten minutes and finally found some in the office.
After the Elks we took a quick drive through the historic downtown area and also through David Crockett State Park. It is a very nice, very large park with a lake, a restaurant, group gathering areas and two campgrounds, one with full hookup sites. The sites were a little small to be comfortable for rigs the size of ours, but nice campgrounds nonetheless.
Before leaving Lawrenceburg we set out to find a geocache in the town. We found one fairly quickly on the grounds of the nearby Masonic Lodge. This was number 4,100 for us! Once we had our cache for this town we headed towards the City of Pulaski, about 18 miles east of Lawrenceburg. Pulaski is a city of about 8,000 named after the American Revolutionary War hero Kazimierz Pulaski. The Pulaski Elks, Lodge 1877, was on the west end of town and again we found a very
nice, fairly new building with some very friendly people. Again, the lodge bought our first cocktail which meant we ended up having two more drinks. Fortunately, we are about an hour and half or two hours between lodges, so the drinks are not building up. Do these pub crawls too fast and you end up actually crawling. After visiting for a while we got our lodge pins and moved on.Before leaving Pulaski, which was founded in 1809, we drove through their very scenic old downtown area and took some pictures. We also did one geocache
downtown. This cache happened to be a virtual cache, meaning no actual container, just some interesting historical or cultural landmark. In this case it was both and highlighted a very interesting footnote in Pulaski’s history. On December 24, 1865, six Tennessee Confederate Army veterans got together in a building just off the town square and founded the original Ku Klux Klan. The history of the Klan shows three distinct periods of organization and this first one was really only active for a few years before Federal enforcement shut down the formal groups. The geocache was interesting in that there is a large brass plaque attached to the side of the building at the cache site which supposedly commemorates the founding of this original Klan group. However in 1990 the building on which the plaque was mounted was sold and the new owner didn’t like the plaque or what it stood for. He decided that instead of just removing the plaque and being done with it there might be more meaning in removing it and remounting it backwards on the wall, with the blank side now facing out.We then left Pulaski and started north to the last town for the day, Columbia, Tennessee. Columbia was about 30 miles north of Pulaski and is a town of about 35,000, the largest of the three we visited today. We arrived in Columbia and found the Elks Lodge, Lodge 686, in a fairly new looking building at the edge of town. This is the oldest of the three lodges we visited today and was Chartered in 1901. The lodge was very busy, but in this case the people were not especially friendly or outgoing. We did our first drink free, but the bartender was alone and very busy, so we couldn’t chat much. The bar manager was going to try to find a lodge pin for us, but she had to leave to go get supplies and didn’t get back before we left. We were disappointed in not getting a lodge pin and as we were leaving a lady at the bar approached Jackie and asked if she could help us get a pin since she knew the Exalted Ruler. Jackie gave her one of our cards with our address so hopefully she will send us a pin if the lodge has any.
We did a quick little tour of old town Columbia and then started back to the campground. We arrived about 6:00 after having driven about 100 miles and visited three Elks lodges. All in all a very nice day. Afer we got home we had cocktails with the Babcocks and then had dinner at their coach. Ray had put a tri-tip steak in the crock pot in the morning and it cooked all day. Made for a great dinner. After dinner we went back to our coach and watched the Olympics the rest of the evening.
We drove down into Florence, Alabama, the first large town south of the border, getting a total of three Alabama caches. Yea, another state! We had lunch at Wendy’s in Florence and toured around the town a little while. Florence is a city of almost 40,000 and is host to the Handy Music Festival, a major two-week long jazz festival held every summer. The festival was actually this week, but hey don’t have any daytime activities, only evening stuff. After our tour of town we drove back north to our campground. Ray and I spent a little time taking down outside stuff in preparation for travel tomorrow. After that we just relaxed in our coach the rest of the night.Monday, July 30th, moving day again. We got the coaches packed up, the walls pulled in we were ready to hit the road by 10:00. We got back on the Natchez Trace Parkway at MP 370 where we got off for our last stop and started north for the last 74 miles of the Trace. Our ultimate destination was an RV park on the north side of the Nashville metro area. We had stayed in the Nashville Country RV Park twice back in 2006 during our cross country runs and thought it was a pretty decent park. It was also more affordable that the others in the area.
We made a couple of stops along the last part of the Trace, including a stop for lunch at a large pullout near a little creek, Swan Creek. I actually got into the creek, which was only about ankle deep, and walked around for a while. The water was not cold at all, but there were a bunch of little baby trout swimming around, so I know there were some bigger ones in the creek somewhere. The last 25 or 30 miles of the Trace were very hilly and winding, slowing travel to about 35 mph, but it was very scenic.We finished MP 444 at the end of the Natchez Trace Parkway where it ends about 20 miles south of the City of Nashville. We drove every one of the 444 miles except for about 8.5 miles that were closed because of construction. I have to say it was very pretty and very relaxing, but I don’t think it’s anything I would want to do more than once. For those who like to hike and explore the woods there is a ton of things to do and see, but for the more sedentary like me it’s pretty much look at the pretty stuff then move on.
The last 35 miles of our trip were around the west edge of the Nashville metro area and it was the first time we have had the motor home on a freeway since we got to New Orleans. We finally got to the RV park about 2:30 and quickly settled in so we could run out and do laundry. We are going to be in Nashville for a full week, but we wanted to get our clothes done today so we wouldn’t have to worry about it. We packed everything in Ray’s car and drove into downtown Goodletsville, the suburb of Nashville where the RV park is located, and did our laundry. We were all done by about 5:30 and we headed home. We had cocktails with the Babcocks, but we did dinner on our own and then spent the rest of the night with the TV and the Olympics.
Tuesday, July 31st, we had a relaxing morning and didn’t leave the coach until about 1:30. We packed up into Ray’s car and drove to Costco for some shopping which both the Babcock’s and us badly needed. We haven’t seen a Costco since Texas. After our Costco run we stopped at the local UPS Service Center where both we and the Babcocks had requested our mail be sent. The Babcocks use a UPS store for their mail forwarding just like us.
We went back to the coaches where Ray did a quick walk of the dog and we headed out again for some exploring in the local area. We drove north through the next town which is called White House, Tennessee. Jackie said she had been here in the 80's during a road trip with her friend Helen, who lives in Massachusetts. They stopped in this little town because a friend of theirs from the Hawthorne, California Police Department, Jim Mathews, had retired and became the Chief of Police in White House. He has long since left that job, but Jackie remembered the town. I was also acquainted with Mathews from my time in the late 70's when I was a Deputy with the Sheriff’s Department in Phoenix. I worked the Fugitive Squad and we had to make frequent prisoner trips to the Los Angeles area. We used the City of Hawthorne as a sort of way station because they had a city jail facility and didn’t mind us putting people in there overnight. It was on one of those trips back in 1976 that I first met Jackie. Matthews was a Lieutenant with Hawthorne PD at the time and my partner and I got to know several of the Hawthorne PD detectives pretty well.
We drove a big circle around the northern suburbs of Nashville and ended up in the town of Gallatin, Tennessee. It’s a town of about 25,000 people and I remembered that it had an Elks Lodge that we had visited back in 2006 when we were through this area. We found the lodge and it was open so we went in for a drink. There were several people there so we chatted for a while and had a cocktail. In 2006 they bought us a couple drinks, this time they didn’t make the offer. We thought we were going to have to leave without getting a new lodge pin because the bartender didn’t have any idea where they might be. We already had one from our 2006 visit, but sometimes they do change them over time so we like to get new ones when we can on repeat visits. Just as we were leaving the Secretary of the Lodge came in and the bartender asked him about pins. He had some in the Lodge office, so we got new pins, and they are different from the one we got in 2006. Yea! After visiting Gallatin we headed back to the coaches.
We went over to the Babcocks for cocktails and dinner. Both of us had bought rotisserie chickens at Costco so Suzie made some rice and veggies and we each cut up our chickens for dinner. We had a great dinner and chatted for a while before we finally went back to our coach for the rest of the night.
Wednesday, August 1st, half the year is now officially gone. Yikes. Ray and Suzie went out this morning and took Casey, their dog, to the groomers. We did a few chores around the house and I also took the car down to the car wash and got it cleaned up finally. It’s been a while and it was starting to look pretty ugly. After lunch the four of us went out to do a little geocaching in the Goodletsville area because we needed a cache for this date for our days of the year caching challenge. We only went a few miles from the park and we ended up stopping after an hour or so with six finds because it was way too hot and humid. At least we got the day filled on our stats chart.
Downtown Goodletsville is loaded with antique stores and all four of us enjoy looking around in them, so we spent the next couple hours walking through about four different antique malls. Nobody bought anything, be we had a good time looking. After antiquing we went back to the RV park to relax and cool off for a while. We also changed clothes because we had a dinner for the four of us planned at a nice restaurant called Aquarium, which is in the big outlet mall in Nashville.
The four of us left the RV park about 4:00 and drove into Nashville to the Opry Mills mall area. This is a part of town to the east of downtown Nashville that is home to a large shopping mall, the Opryland Hotel and the Grand Ole’ Opry House. We drove by the Opryland Hotel, which is a huge 3,000 room hotel and convention center complex with a glassed in atrium lobby, as well as the Opry House, which is where most of the Grand Ole’ Opry music shows are now staged. The hotel, which is actually named the Gaylord, was opened in 1977 as a part of the Opryland USA theme park. This project included a large amusement park and construction of the new Opry House facility as a larger home for the Grand Ole’ Opry, which had been performing at the Ryman Auditorium in downtown Nashville since 1947. The amusement park finally succumbed to economic pressures and was closed at the end of 1997 and the Opry Mills mall was built on the site.
We found parking and spent about an hour walking around the large mall doing a little shopping. We were actually down here to have dinner at the Aquarium Restaurant, which is located at one end of the mall. Jackie and I had visited Nashville twice back in 2006, and on one of the visits had attended a session of the Grand Ole’ Opry. Before the show we had dinner at the Aquarium and had thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The Aquarium chain is part of the Landry restaurant empire and there are several around the country. The idea is to give the impression that you are dining under the sea. Everything in the place is blue and green, the walls and ceilings look like coral reefs, and there is a huge aquarium right in the middle of the restaurant. The actual seating for the restaurant is all around this huge glass tank with thousands of fish. The tank would be right at home in any regular public aquarium like the one we were at in Corpus Christi. It has every variety of ocean fish you can think of and is very interesting to watch while you eat.
Our experience six years ago was great, at least as we remember it. It is not a cheap place to eat, none of the Landry properties are, but we remembered good food, good service and a nice ambiance. We had told the Babcocks about our experience and wanted to take them there for a nice evening out. Well, either my memory is selective and faulty, or things have changed! Short version - The dinner from Hell. We arrived with reservations at 5:30 and the place was not very busy, so we got seated immediately. We asked for a table with a good view of the fish, there were plenty of empty one’s available, but got seated at one with a partially blocked view by a hostess who seemed like she could care less what we wanted. We immediately noticed that the place was freezing cold. Suzie is especially susceptible to being cold, but even Ray and I were cold. We were dressed in shorts, of course, because it was 98 degrees outside today. The restaurants advertise the experience of "dining under the sea" but it was more like the Arctic Sea. I fully expected to see a polar bear reaching into the fish tank from the ice cap above. We finally asked to move to an adjacent table that was not directly under one of the A/C vents and our waiter, Vincent, was extremely reluctant because he had already taken part of our order - not delivered mind you, just taken - and "it wasn't in his area." We finally insisted because Suzie was turning an interesting shade of blue from the cold air. We didn't want anyone to think she was choking and grab her in a Heimlich.
Not that she had anything to choke on at that point. We waited a full ten minutes after seating for a waiter to even appear to begin service. Then Vincent got our drink order, two vodka rocks for Jackie and I and a bottle of wine for the Babcocks, not exactly complicated. We also ordered an appetizer platter. We waited, and waited, and waited. It took another 15 minutes for the drinks and water to finally appear at the table. Still no appetizer and Vincent appears at the table ready to take our order for dinner. He told us the appetizer would be out "any minute" and he wanted to get our order in so it would not be unduly delayed because the kitchen was busy. The restaurant was only half full, so I guess they were cooking for the restaurant next door too.
We reluctantly gave him our dinner orders and were very adamant about not wanting to rush dinner and specifically told him not to bring our dinners until we had time to enjoy the appetizer platter. Another ten minutes goes by and here comes a food runner with a tray with our clam chowder - no appetizer yet, but soup's on! We get Vincent over and pointed out that we haven't even got our appetizer yet, much less finished it, and the soup is sitting on that tray over there. He stumbles a bit, not quite sure what to say, so we saved him the trouble and told him to take the soup back to the kitchen and poke around to see where they might have hidden our appetizer.
Finally, 30 minutes after we ordered it Vincent brings the appetizer platter, which was actually quite tasty. I have to give some credit where it is due. The Bruschetta was very good, as was the crab dip and the calamari. After less than ten minutes, the appetizer is only half gone, and Vincent reappears to ask if we are ready for soup now. He is confused when we point to the remaining appetizers and tell him we are still eating those. I get very specific and tell him to come back when the plate is empty. Vincent seems to get grumpy.
Around this time the manager strolls by and makes the mistake of asking how we are enjoying dinner. We politely, I think, let him know our experience so far and he apologizes and tells us that is not how he wants the restaurant to be operated. We had let him know that we were looking for a fine dining experience - the cost of eating at this place more than justifies that idea - and we were feeling rushed, like we were at Denny's. He must have chewed out Vincent because he came by about ten minutes later, after we finally finished the appetizer, and politely asked if we were finished and could he bring our soup. I said sure, and more water too, since my glass had been empty for at least 20 minutes.
We got the clam chowder served and, again, excellent quality. Very thick and creamy with tons of clams. Some of the best I have had. Vincent, having learned his lesson, I guess, was hovering about, at least not asking if we were done yet, until we finished the chowder. He took those plates away and quickly brought our dinners. A bit too quickly because, as we suspected might happen, the broiled fisherman's platter ordered by two of our party had clearly been just sitting under the heat lamp for 45 minutes and were stone cold. My mixed grill was at least warm - probably because I had ordered the steak blue (very rare) they had held off on cooking that plate. The fourth entree', Suzie’s Mahi Mahi and shrimp, was pipping hot. Go figure.
The two broiled platters went back and spent another 10 minutes being reheated. I was half done with my plate when the other two finally got theirs to eat. Jackie did enjoy everything on her plate. Ray was unhappy that the reheated lobster tail turned a bit mushy after it's time in the microwave. My mixed grill gets mixed reviews. The lobster tail was very good, the grilled shrimp were excellent, the rice and beans average and the little lump of steak would have dulled a new chain saw. It was cooked perfectly, just the way I like it, very, very rare, but it didn’t have much flavor and was really tough.
Suzie, who doesn’t like spicy food, said her dish was too spicy for her to even eat it and no one else wanted it because we had enough of our own food. Vincent was happy to take it back and assured Ray that it would be taken off the bill. However, in the process he also told Ray that if Suzie had told him she didn’t like spicy food he would have recommended something else as he knew that the Mahi Mahi and Shrimp was spicy. He didn’t have an answer for why it didn’t say that on the menu and why it was up to the customer to figure out the right questions to ask. Who expects fish to be spicy unless you are in a Thai restaurant maybe?
This would be a good time to also let my readers know that the last time we were here must have been in the afternoon of a school day, because I don’t remember having to put up with dozens upon dozens of impolite, noisy, screaming, jumping, running, crying kids and their parents who could care less. In fact, some of the parents were jumping up from their booths and tables to run over to plant their noses on the aquarium glass just like the kids. You can see the fish from anywhere in the place, you don’t need to get right up to the tank. I realize that the restaurant can’t really control what kids do when they come to the place, but just a warning to anyone considering going to the Aquarium, it is clearly a kid magnet place despite the cost. You might be better off having lunch at your local kindergarten. It would be way cheaper and the fishsticks would probably be better too.
We finally finished dinner and got our bills. Ray looked at his and noticed that Suzie’s dinner was still on it. Vincent told him he didn’t have the power to remove it, so Ray asked for the manager - again. We again, probably a little less politely, told him what a horrible evening it has been. He did take the dinner, as well as the two cups of clam chowder, off of Ray’s bill, but didn’t offer us anything. Suffice to say I give the place ten negative stars and would urge everyone to steer clear of the place at any cost. After dinner we drove back to the RV park and relaxed the rest of the evening.
Thursday, August 2nd, we left the coach about 12:30 with the Babcocks and drove to downtown Nashville, near the State Capitol, to take the “Nash Trash Tour” around Nashville. If you have a sense of humor and are not easily offended, this is an absolute must-see for anyone coming to Nashville. Two women, who call themselves Sheri Lynn & Brenda Kay, the Jugg Sisters, bought themselves a school bus, painted it shocking pink, and started doing these tours of Nashville. The revel in portraying stereotypical, big hair, heavy makeup, loud, trailer trash red neck southern women. It is really more of a two hour comedy show with a few Nashville sights thrown in for good measure.This trip had been recommended to us by some friends when we were here back in 2006. They had gone on it a year or two before and told us we just had to go. We enjoyed the tour so much we wanted to go again and take the Babcocks
along with us. We probably would have gone again even if we didn’t have Ray and Suzie with us. It is NOT for someone without a sense of humor or someone who is easily offended. Although all the humor is good natured, it is a little risque, or as they used to say, “blue”, but not overtly so. The real Walmart trailer trash types might get their noses bent out of joint too, but they probably wouldn’t take the trip anyway.
For the rest of the tour they do little song parodies, hang out the windows yelling at random strangers, flirt with one or two carefully selected passengers, and just generally make jokes for two hours. They point out people on the street and call them by celebrity names, like two Black gals on a corner were Aretha and Beyonce. We drove by a construction site and there was a cop directing traffic. One of the gals leaned out the open window and yelled, “hey, you left your handcuffs at my place last night.” The cop laughed and waved. I guess they are used to the bus going through town. In 2006 we were going by the fire station and there were some fireman out in the driveway. She yells, “show us your hoses!”
After the tour was over we bought a couple of tee shirts and said goodbye to the Juggs until the next time. I will repeat, if you come to Nashville and want to have some irreverent laughs, be sure to look up the Nash Trash Tour and “get trashed on the Big Pink Bus” like we did. Be sure to make your plans, and your reservations, a couple of months in advance. These tours are booked solid and you may not get on if you wait until you get to town. After the tour we headed back towards the RV park, stopping to get a couple of geocaches along the way. We had to have at least one to fill the date on our days of the year challenge. We ended up with two new finds and one DNF.
We had cocktails with the Babcocks and then Ray and I went to a little market just down the street from the RV park and got pizza for dinner. There is a franchise company called Hunt Brothers Pizza that puts pizza ovens in small convenience stores, gas stations and other similar venues all over the country. They have about 6,000 outlets around the country. We first had one at an RV park we were in Miami in 2006. They have the best super thin crust pizza around. The regular one is pretty good too, and they are not expensive. We had dinner with the Babcocks, enjoyed our pizza and laughed some more about the tour before heading back to our coach and relaxing the rest of the night.
Friday, August 3rd, we woke up slightly less rested than we would have liked. The weather alert radio went off twice in the middle of the night with warnings of severe thunderstorms. Fortunately, neither of the storms came over us. I did get up for the first one, since the warning was for the county we are in, and watched the progression on the computer for about 45 minutes. It went just north of us and then, after it had passed to the east, came south, so it basically went literally around us. The warning talked of inch size hail, which, along with high winds, is what scares me most about thunderstorms. The rain is no big deal, we are watertight. It is the prospect of hail punching holes in our vents, skylights and windows that worries me.
We left the coach after lunch for some more exploration with the Babcocks. We first made a quick stop so Jackie could get her hair cut, then we continued down into downtown Nashville for some in-car, drive-by sightseeing. We had seen a few things downtown from the bus tour yesterday, but we wanted to take a more leisurely look at things. It was too hot and humid for us to want to go out and walk around, but the downtown area is mostly bars and restaurants anyway. Downtown Nashville is really more of a nightlife place than daytime touristy.
We spent about 90 minutes driving around looking at the sights, including trying to get a couple of geocaches, but we didn’t have much luck. We couldn’t get close enough to any of the downtown caches, which were all virtuals, to get the information we needed to take credit for the cache. We finally found one, an old fort right on the Cumberland River where we could find a place to park long enough for Ray to jump out and get the info we needed for the log. After downtown we went back to the Farmer’s Market, which on the weekend includes a swap meet, and walked around there for about an hour before heading back to Goodletsville where the RV park is located. We stopped a several stores to do some needed shopping before heading back to the park. We had cocktails with the Babcocks but then went back to our own coach for dinner. After dinner we watched TV for the rest of the evening.
Saturday, August 4th, we are up and out of the coaches by about 10:30 and in Ray’s car heading south on I-65 to the southwest side of Nashville, about 35 miles from our RV park. Our destination is The Loveless Café. As a bit of background, almost two weeks ago, as we were leaving Tupelo, Mississippi to continue of journey on the Natchez Trace, we had stopped at a local gas station to refuel the coach. After fueling I pulled into a big parking lot next door to the station adjacent to a mom and pop type truck repair shop, big rig trucks. The owner was working in the shop and came over to chat with me while I was hooking up the car. Most folks in this part of the country are pretty friendly. He told me he used to have a diesel coach and has RVed in the past, so we talked about our travels and so forth. When I mentioned that we were doing the Natchez Trace Parkway he said that there was a great restaurant with food that is to die for located just a block from the northern terminus of the Trace Parkway at the south edge of Nashville. He couldn’t remember the name but said you will drive right past it and can’t mis it because of the number of cars in the lot.
Five days later, when we finished the Trace and arrived in Nashville, we did see the place and noted that it was called Loveless Café and Motel, and it was, indeed, packed with cars and people. Since we were in the motor home we didn’t stop, but said we need to check on this place. We did some checks of reviews and found that it was extremely highly rated on several of the review sites so we decided that sometime during our stay here we would make a trip back down to that part of Nashville to go to the Loveless Café. Today was that day. We arrived at the Café at 11:20 and the lot was full of cars and there were people waiting all over the place. When I registered for a table for four they told us that it was about an hour and forty minute wait. During our research we had learned that this was not at all unusual and the wait could be two or three hours on weekends.
The first business on the site was known as the Harpeth Valley Tea Room. In 1951 Lon and Annie Loveless bought the property and started serving fried chicken and biscuits to travelers driving up and down US Highway 100, one of the main roads in this pre-interstate era. They set up picnic tables in the front yard and sold their food out their front door. They later converted the rooms of the early 1900's home into a dining room and kitchen and built 14 motel rooms adjacent to the café, creating The Loveless Motel and Café. They also enlarged the menu to include country hams that were cured, smoked and carved on the premises. Over the years the property was sold several different times but the name, and famous sign on the side of the road out front, remained the same. Supposedly, according to the literature at the café, so did the now famous secret biscuit recipe, which was handed down from new owner to new owner. In 1982 the current owner expanded by creating Loveless Motel and Cafe’s “Hams & Jams” mail-order business and catalog.
With the introduction of the interstate highways and Nashville’s increasing growth, the Loveless began to emphasize its café and mail order products, as it moved away from the motel business. Motel operations ceased in 1985 and the 14 units were converted into retail space, although the sign remained the same. The only change is that the “No Vacancy” part of the sign is continuously lit.We spent about an hour walking through the various shops on the property, which include an antique store, a bike shop, and the Loveless Hams & Jams shop. The rest of the wait we just sat and watched people walking around. Our wait actually ended up being an hour and twenty-five minutes. The hardest part was sitting around for that long smelling the great scents coming from the kitchen and the smoke house right next door.
Once we got to the table we found the service to be very good. They have an extensive menu that includes a wide variety of Southern style items for breakfast, lunch or dinner. I ended up getting their Southern sampler platter, which included three different meat choices and two sides. I got the pulled pork, the meatloaf and the fried chicken. There were a dozen sides to choose from and I picked mashed potatoes and creamed corn. Ray got the same meal except he chose country ham instead of meatloaf. Jackie got the daily special, which was a spicy fried quarter chicken, and Suzie got the chicken fried steak. Ray actually ordered two complete entree’s because he couldn’t make up his mind. His second entree’ was the fried chicken livers. All of the food was as advertised and promised, to die for! Everything on my plate was outstanding, and everyone else in our party said the same thing. The only exception was Ray didn’t care for his turnip greens. Out of all the food on the table, that was it for critical comments. By the way, the “secret” biscuit recipe was outstanding as well. Jackie tasted Ray’s chicken livers and liked them so much she got an order to go before we left. And the prices were very reasonable too. Our two meals, Jackie’s to-go chicken livers, and drinks, including a beer for me, was $46, about a third of what we paid for the disaster at the Aquarium restaurant a few nights ago. Anyone passing within fifty miles of Nashville has GOT to go to the Loveless Café. It’s on Highway 100 at the south edge of the Nashville city limits. It is only about five miles off of Interstate 40, but use a GPS because the roads around Nashville are really confusing.
After our wonderful lunch, which was also dinner for the day, we got back in the car and drove to the Nashville Elks Lodge, which is actually in the City of Franklin, Tennessee, a few miles south of Nashville on I-65. Jackie and I had visited this lodge back in 2006 and our notes indicated that it was a very friendly lodge with very nice facilities. The lodge is on a hilltop and is a big building with a great view of the surrounding countryside. They have a pool and lots of space. The building is new, built in 1999, but he lodge is one of the oldest in Tennessee, chartered back in the 1890's. The lodge number is 72 which makes it one of the older lodges we have visited.
There were a few people in the bar when we got there about 2:00, including the bar manager. They were cordial and the lodge did buy or first drink and give us lodge pins at no cost. Unfortunately, it seemed like everyone in the bar was smoking, including the bar manager with a cigar, and despite the “smoke-eater” fans we were choking on the smoke. The final straw was someone turned on the jukebox at very high volume and that, along with the half dozen TVs playing, made conversation impossible. We ended up just paying for the first drink and leaving after about a half hour because it was just too uncomfortable.
We didn’t do anymore exploring because the weather had turned bad and there were rain showers on and off all over the area. We drove the forty miles back to our campground on the northeast side of town and settled in for the rest of the night. We had cocktails with the Babcocks, but no one wanted a dinner after our big lunch. After cocktails we went back to our coach for the rest of the night and watched TV.
Sunday, August 5th, our last day in Nashville. We had awakened to dark skies after a night of on and off rain. No thunderstorms to speak of, but quite a lot of rain. We needed to get at least one cache today because of our quest to have a find for every day of the year, and this date had no finds. We knew we weren’t going to do a lot of caching because everything was wet and there were more thunderstorms and rain showers in the forecast. The four of us left after lunch and drove a few miles south and found one cache. It happened to be by the sign marking the entrance to the campus of the Dollar General corporation. Dollar General, along with it’s rival Family dollar, are this generation’s “dime stores” and are a kind of general store. They are really big in the south, although they have a presence all over the country.
As soon as we got the one find the rain started again we just headed back home with our one find. After the rain stopped Ray and I did some cleaning up outside, taking down screens and so forth, getting ready for travel in the morning. After that we spent the rest of the day relaxing and doing little chores in the coach. We got together with the Babcocks for cocktails, but had dinner on our own.
Monday, August 6th, travel day and, although the sky was dark and cloudy, there was no rain when we got up. We packed up and left the RV park about 9:30 and headed north on I-65 out of the Nashville area, going towards Louisville, Kentucky, about 150 miles away. We are actually headed for Fort Knox, the Army base that is also the home for the nation’s gold bullion repository. Since Ray is a disabled vet he has a military ID which allows him to use the camping facilities that are on a lot of military bases around the country. He had found out that Fort Knox, which is only about 20 miles from Louisville, has a nice campground and they would probably have room for us. He can take us in as his guests.
We were only 25 miles from the state border when we left Goodletsville and we
crossed into Kentucky pretty early in the trip. This is our first time in Kentucky. Although we have traveled through 42 of the 49 continental states, all but Kentucky are in the northeast. When we traveled through the south and east in 2006 we didn’t get up to Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New Jersey, or Maryland. Somehow in all that travel, plus our travels in the Midwest in 2008, we managed to miss Kentucky. We were all around it, but never went through it. Our map on the side of the coach has had this big white hole in the middle all this time. Now we have filled it in. Yea us!We stopped at a Flying J truck stop right after entering Kentucky to get fuel and fill our propane. We need to make sure our propane is full when we go to the rallies because if we only have 30 amp electric we need to use the gas water heater. We made one other stop for lunch at a rest area before rolling into Fort Knox and the Camp Carlson Campground about 2:30 local time. It was really 1:30 our time, but along the way up I-65 we passed into the Eastern Time Zone and lost an hour. Western Kentucky is in the Central Time Zone, but most of the state is in the Eastern. We got no rain along the way and by the time we got to Fort Knox the skies were mostly clear.
The military campground we are staying in is what they consider “off post” meaning that, although it is on the military reservation, the physical land of the base, it is not connected to the rest of the base. This means you don’t have to go through a guarded gate to get into the campground. We registered and for the entire eight day stay we paid $105, a pretty good bargain for a nice 50 amp, full hookup site. We got settled into our campsite and were happy that it was not quite as hot or humid as it was in Nashville. We got together with the Babcocks for cocktails and then dinner again in our own coach. We relaxed the rest of the night.
Our arrival into Kentucky for the first time marks a great place to close this episode of the blog and get it published. We have ten days until the rally circuit starts, most of which will be spent here at Fort Knox. Until the next time, spend each day looking for the happy in life. See ya.
