Nashville, TN. Sept 20th - 27th

The crew made our longest non-stop trip yet on our drive from the Great Smoky Mountains to Nashville. Four hours without a potty break for the dogs. Nice, easy drive. Hop on Interstate 40 West. Drive for 216 miles and hop off. We've done more miles but never four hours non-stop.

KOA Nashville was a nice park with pool, jacuzzi, game room, gym, and lots of grass. We had a nice pull-through site with a patio. But the thing we liked most was the live entertainment by the pool every night.. The leaves are starting to change and fall officially arrived while we were there. Wouldn't have been a normal stay if we didn't have some rain. I considered taking video but then decided that I'd just be repeating myself. Trust me, video from inside the RV would have looked identical to previous videos but the thunder and lightning was crazy. Kinda cool and mostly at night, so it didn't impact us much. FYI - the leak is NOT fixed yet. 😕

We met lots of nice folks at the campground. There were more high-end RVs there than any other park that we've been at. Wow! Quite a display of really nice coaches. And when you have a $2M+ custom-built Newell RV, you can paint it whatever color you damn well please. 🤔

The murder mystery dinner we did the night we arrived was something different and we enjoyed it. It was an 80's theme so each of the 16 participates was assigned to be someone from the 80's. I was Crocodile Dundee and Melissa was Madonna. $10 worth of Amazon costume jewelry and Melissa rocked the Madonna look.

Side note - one of the other characters was Elvira and this girl nailed it. Purple hair, push-up bra, fishnet stockings, and 8' stiletto heels. Of course we asked if she had to buy all that stuff. Her reply, "No, I had it all in my RV". So obviously our next question was "Even the stiletto heels?" She says' "yaa, I probably have at least 10 pairs". Aaaah...Ok, then. Probably best to just leave it at that but we both agreed that it would be really interesting to be a fly on the wall in that RV. 🤣

I mentioned that I attended the Titans football game on Sunday. They are NOT good! For those of you that are gamblers, I don't know what the over/under is for their win total this year but bet the under and you should be safe. Still really enjoyed the afternoon.

We took a 20 minute drive to the the Tuesday Night Farmer's Market at 12 South. 12 South is a residential area with eateries and a nice park for the dogs to roam.

We got to have lunch at the Gaylord Opryland Resort with our good friends, Evan & Helen, from back home that were visiting their son in Nashville. The hotel is beautiful and it was great to catch up with them!

We'd been to Nashville before but hadn't had a chance to see a performance at the Grand Ole Opry. We had plenty of time here so we had a date night and finally got there. Great night. So iconic!

Naturally, it wouldn't be Nashville without a visit to Broadway Street. There's a reason it's called Honky-Tonk Highway. It's walkable, lively, and lined with bars and restaurants. Did I say "bars". I mean "LOTS of bars". And we made quite a day out of it! You can visit old favorites like Tootsie's and Nudie's as well newer ones that are owned by some of country music's biggest stars like Jason Aldean and Luke Bryan. Luke Combs recently opened his bar, Hurricane 10, and that was tops on our list. The best part is that, no matter what bar you walk in, there will be live music and it'll be really good. It's crazy how much singing talent is in Nashville.

Funny story about our day on Broadway: Melissa wore a very cool hat for the day. We'd been out for less than an hour and four other girls had told Melissa "I love your hat!". I think one of them would have bought it from her on the spot. Well...our bartender at Hurricane 10 suggested that we take a shot every time someone says "I love your hat". Seemed like a fun idea so we agreed. 😛😎 I'm not exaggerating, almost every bar we walked into inevitably someone would say it. It got to the point where we'd meander into our next bar, pull up a stool, and it would go something like this:

Bartender; "What are you drinking?"

Kevin; "We'll have two tequila/soda with an orange"

Girl sitting next to us; "Hey, I love..."

Kevin; "No, no, no! Please don't say it"

Girl; "What? I was just gonna say that I love the hat"

Kevin; "Damn it! We'll take two shots as well"

Thank goodness for Uber.

I know many of you have probably been to Nashville but if you haven't, put it on your bucket list. Such a fun city! Next up, we'll make a stop for a night at the Elks Lodge in Cape Girardeau, MO on our way to Lake of the Ozarks. Should be a beautiful time of year.

And if you wanna see the hat, you gotta go the "Pictures" section. 😁