Monday 24 June
Our first stop today was Nashville, Tennessee. It was a much bigger city than we expected. My research had focused around their visitors’ website, mainly “the top 10 things to do in Nashville”, and a hope we would run into Keith or Nicole on our way 😉
We intended to start at the Music City Walk of Fame, but a storm hit as we pulled up near Bicentennial Park, so we toured Music Row instead, full of famous recording studios used by Elvis, Dolly Parton etc. We considered a visit to the Grand Ole Opry, but were not too keen to pay to do a backstage tour as we are just not big enough country fans (sorry, Dad!). Instead we visited the Parthenon, the world’s only full-scale reproduction of the one in Athens, Greece. It houses a museum and art gallery in Centennial Park, but as Mondays is the only day of the week they are closed, we didn’t get to explore inside it.
From there we went on to Belle Meade, to tour a historic plantation mansion. We enjoyed lunch from the RV in the grounds, the joined the 2pm tour of the mansion, winery and grounds. The front of the house still has bullet holes in it from a scuffle during the Civil War, but Belle Meade’s real claim to fame is breeding thoroughbreds. Seabiscuit and Secretariat are direct descendants of the most famous horse from here, and the last Kentucky Derby was full of Belle Meade plantation descendants. As Zac missed a school excursion to Vaucluse House last week, I thought this was a good replacement lesson. And the fact the tour ended with wine-tasting in Nashville’s only winery made even Ross a willing participant! The winery is actually one of the only non-profit wineries in the world, and puts its proceeds back into the historic house maintenance.
We drove three hours from there to Memphis, ready to tour Graceland tomorrow. It is getting hotter as we head further south! And we have not turned on a tv or seen any news, as we set up too late each night to bother with tv. We are close to Tornado Alley, which we think about each time we go through a patch of storm along the way, but we assume the season for such weather is past?
After my comment yesterday that we are all healthy and well, it was almost the end of the world this morning for Sam (aka Mr Drama King) when he was stung under his foot by a bee. Then Belle fell off a footpath and opened up a small wound created by falling off a gutter in the Grand Canyon – there was momentarily quite a lot of blood, and Belle was afraid she was going to die!! Apart from such dramatics, all are well, although Zac is slightly disgusted I am trying to make him write a report on his visit to Belle Meade – I am apparently interrupting his holiday…