One of the places I was really excited about visiting on our road trip was Nashville, Tennessee. Music City USA. I grew up listening to country music as a child, and I had visions of walking through the Ryman Auditorium, host to the Grand Ole Opry from 1943 to 1974. Many of the greats such as Patsy Cline, Merle Haggard and Loretta Lynn had graced that stage, and I wanted to see for myself the place much of country music history was made.
I wanted to walk down Music Row, visit the Country Music Hall of Fame. Check out the up-and-coming talent in the local bars. Maybe even go full-blown tourist and visit Opryland.
So, what did we end up doing? None of it!!
That’s right…we didn’t visit one single attraction in Nashville during our four days there. We were even camped out right next to The Hermitage, the former home of President Andrew Jackson, for goodness sake. And we didn’t see that either.
So, how did this happen? How did we manage to fail on such a grand scale?
It all started innocently enough. We left Talladega around 11 am the morning after the race. We knew we couldn’t check into our campsite until 1 pm, and we only had a couple of hours to drive. So we meandered out of Alabama and into Tennessee at a leisurely pace, enjoying the scenery and the ride as we went.
We arrived on the outskirts of Nashville just after lunch time. Our enjoyable four-lane interstate widened out into a 12-lane superhighway, and traffic ground down to a slow crawl full of commuters. Bubba expertly guided our 65-foot rig in and out of snarled traffic and complicated highway exchanges that were made even more treacherous with road construction bypasses. We finally exited the freeway and rolled into the J. Percy Priest Dam State Park camping area around 1:30 or 2:00 that afternoon. It had been a relatively short drive, but we were happy to be off the highway.
We found our site, which was beautifully maintained and had a great view of the boat launching ramp and the lake, and settled in for the afternoon. Neither of us felt like going out and braving rush hour traffic that day.
It turned out that we enjoyed our campground so much, we just never left.
We enjoyed taking afternoon walks around the campground, our big old dog Emma seemed to enjoy splashing in the water at the boat ramp, and we enjoyed looking out across the lake, just watching the day brighten and then fade into evening. The weather was perfect, there were no bugs, and the only thing we wished for were kayaks to take out onto the lake.
Somehow one afternoon turned into four days. Suddenly it was time to think about heading on. Somehow, after all the noise and activity of the racetrack, we were simply enjoying the peace and quiet of this beautiful state park. Although they allow stays of up to 14 days, we had a schedule to keep, and prepared to depart the next day.
As we said our goodbyes to Nashville, we vowed to return to this beautiful place and stay the full two weeks that are allowed. On our next trip, we will see all of those sights we skipped out on this time. We promise.
On to Kentucky, and our underground exploration of Mammoth Cave.
