America 2015: Day Nineteen (17 August 2015)

Hey Georgia, hey Smokey Mountain Rain
Hey Galveston, He Stopped Loving Her Today
Hey Fancy, you know it's true
That Nashville, wouldn't have
Blue Eyes, Cryin' In The Rain
Hey Fire, Burnin' Round The Ring
Hey Crazy, you know it's true
That Nashville, wouldn't be Nashville, without you

                                                                                                             - Tim McGraw

Monday 17 August

After my killer headache, I slept twelve hours, and woke up feeling great.

I meant to write last night that I got a very nice text from Matt. He and Jaimie have invited us to come back and stay with them and the kids when we visit Chicago in early June after the Indianapolis 500. Obviously we made a good impression on them this time around. I’m already looking forward to it!

We drove back to Nashville today, and managed to avoid any big thunderstorms this time around, although there’s been some rain around Nashville, which is expected to continue over the next few days as we head towards East Tennessee and a weekend of NASCAR racing in Bristol beginning Friday.

Lunch today was a little way out of downtown Nashville, and came via a recommendation from a friend who’s spent a fair bit of time in this city. As a result, she knows all the good places to eat. Taco Mamacita is by far and away the best tacos (actually served wrapped in a tortilla) I’ve ever had. Not entirely sure why, but Nashville is crazy for Mexican food. Not that I’m complaining – Mexican is one of my favourites, too.

 

There is a lot of Civil War history in Tennessee, and we’ve seen countless signs to various small battlefields and cemeteries. Back in the days of the Confederacy, the campaign, one that featured bloody battles at Shiloh, Tennessee and Vicksburg, Mississippi was known as the western front. Because of the tyranny of distance, was less well-known than the campaign in Maryland and Virginia, where men like Robert E. Lee, ‘Stonewall’ Jackson and Winfield Hancock made their names. Tennessee was where a then-barely known general named Ulysses S. Grant was plying his trade before being brought east by President Lincoln to try and win the war after the Union victory at Gettysburg.

You can scarcely drive more than twenty or thirty minutes before coming upon another gravesite or memorial. Every battlefield is a national park and the people in charge do a wonderful job of looking after everything. It still boggles my mind, though, that there was a time when the differences, political and ideological, between the northern and southern states were so great that there was a war, and one that lasted for four years.

The candy store on Broadway is amazing!

 

A quiet night in Nashville tonight – the amount of people out and about is drastically less than over the weekend. I guess that’s normal most Monday nights, even in a tourist-driven city like Nashville, but it’s particularly so this week, because the summer break is over: school goes back in most areas on Thursday.

We ate at Rippy’s, who do an amazing plate of smoked chicken, and headed back to the room early to relax. One of the channels was showing the James Bond film, Die Another Day, with Pierce Brosnan. Good film, but they manage to stretch out a two-hour movie into three hours, with the longest and most boring ads you’ve ever heard. It reminded me why I prefer to record stuff from TV and skip through all the ads. The movie lost all momentum each time there was a break. Still, good fun. I reckon Pierce Brosnan was an okay Bond, but man, did he get saddled with some bad scripts.

Off to Chattanooga tomorrow, and fingers crossed it won’t be raining quite as hard and as often as the forecast suggests! Thanks, Nashville, it’s been so much fun!