Tennessee, 11/3 &4: Finally - Tennessee | |
OK, I know that this sign is a deliberate double-entendre. Read on to find out what it is really referring to. | |
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WEDNESDAY, 11/3/21: LEBANON
We bid Mammoth goodby. We will now be in Tennessee for the rest of the month. Our first campground in Tennessee is Cedars of Lebanon State Park. With nights reaching down into the low 30s, the electric hookups will allow us to run our heater at balmy temperatures. We could, of course, run on LP without electricity, but we would burn through the LP pretty quickly if we pooped up the temps to the level we were dreaming of.
Cedars is 10 miles from the city of Lebanon. We stopped at Walmart to exchange our empty Blue Rhino LP tank for a full one. That’s all. Nothing more. Well, that damn black hole did it again. I am too embarrassed to say how much randsom we had to pay to drive away this time.
Lebanon is 40 miles east of Nashville. The two most notable things about Lebanon is the name, and the $2.95 gas prices. The rest of what we saw was old Americana - long string streets of franchises that sparkled about 20 years ago but has lost its sheen.
After a few glorious days of perfect hiking weather, today was drab and cold. Once set up, the lazies set in. We fired up our Swedish-made Alde radiant-floor heating system to sauna levels. This weather called for chili. I literally spent the entire afternoon meticulously building a pot of chili using my two secret weapons, Spicy Hot V-8 and steak cubes. Tomorrow we tour Nashville. The rest of the evening was boning up the sights of Music City.
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Cedars of Lebanon State Park has three loops. This loop is for the big boys with electric and water hookups. | |
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THURSDAY, 11/4/21: NASHVILLE
Normally, I’m not a big city kind of guy. There are a couple of exceptions. I still enjoy visiting New Orleans where I once lived and met Wanda, and I thoroughly enyoyed a week I spent in San Fransisco. There may be a couple more. Although I have never been to Nashville, I am a country music fan. I had high hopes for Nashville.
Our first stop was the Farmers Market and the Tennessee State Museum. They are neighbors and we thought we could kill two birds with one stone. In Europe, we loved the vast colorful markets. The Nashville market sounded like it was similar. Like European markets, it was open everyday, had permanent stalls, and had a food court selling prepared dishes.
Well……..?, the reality was not so much like Europe. Apparently, I misread something. The produce market is only open on weekends. The food court was open seven days a week; however, unlike the homemade dishes served by mom’n’pop-run stalls in Europe, these were fancy franchise restaurants typical of an upscale food court in a mall. Strike one for us.
We hit a homer at the museum. I had read that it was a pleasant little free museum that you could bang out in a few minutes. I must have dyslexia. I totally misread that too. The museum was a first-rate, mind-grabbing, interesting, perfectly presented history of Tennessee. It captured us for 2 1/2 hours, and we could have easily doubled that.
I learned a lot about Tennessee’s early years, before the Civil War. The museum didn't sugarcoat the bad stuff like broken treaties, the Trail of Tears, slavery, Jim Crow, etc. Tennessee does have a lot to celebrate. For instance, great musicians hailed from Tennessee. The music they created is priceless. From blues, to bluegrass, to country, to rock’n’roll, to rock-a-billy, Tennesse has had a vital hand in the creation and development of these genres.
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The three tribes that occupied the Tennessee territory at the time that Europeans arrived were the Cherokees, Chickasaws, and Creek. | |
FUN FACT: The Cumberland Compact of 1780 established the first government in the Tennessee territory. Wanda’s great great great……grandfather on her dad’s side, Ambrose Maulding, was a signatory of the document. Ambrose Maulding fought Indians allied with the British during the Revolutionary war. He eventually rose to the rank of colonel. Settlements along the Cumberland River system were called stations or forts. These were not military facilities. They were stockades that supported the fledgling settlements. A clan of Mauldings, including Ambrose, established Mauling Station, on the Red River in what is now southern Kentucky. Wanda’s ancestors came to the New World very early on. Thomas Richard Maulding moved from Barbados to America in 1701. He eventually ended up in what is now Kentucky. Francis Maulding arrived in Virginia in 1635. WOW!! | |
SAD FACT: Even though the Cherokee established a British/American style society, it wasn’t enough. In 1830, at President Andrew Jackson’s insistence, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act. During the 1830s, all the woodland tribes of southeast America, including the westernized Cherokee, were forcibly removed and made to walk to the Oklahoma Territory. In my view, it is a stain on Jackson’s reputation. | |
Three presidents came from Tennessee: Andrew Jackson, James Polk, and Andrew Johnson. Polk was a fervent proponent of Manifest Destiny - the belief that America should, and will, become a nation that spans from ocean-to-ocean. To that end, Polk spearheaded us into the Mexican War in 1848. The result of Mexico’s defeat in that war was that Mexico ceded to America what is now our entire southwestern territory, fulfilling the dream of Manifest Destiny. Many called the war with Mexico a land grab. | |
I remember these appliances. When I was a kid, we had a ringer wash machine just like this. I got my fingers caught in the ringer more than once. | |
Just some arts works by Tennessee artists - no significance that I could muster, but they caught my attention. | |
From the museum we walked to the riverfront where we found a re-creation of old Fort Nashborough on a bluff overlooking the Cumberland River. Established in 1779 by James Robertson, Fort Nashborough was not a military facility. It was a stockade for the settlement that was the forerunner of Nashville. It was named after Revolutionary War hero, Francis Nash. If you haven’t heard of him before, neither had I. | |
The Tennessee Statehouse. | |
Fort Nashborough, founded by James Robertson in 1779. | |
Nissan Stadium, where the Tennessee Titans play, across the Cumberland River from Fort Nashborough. | |
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We followed the riverfront walk to the very beginning of Broadway Street, or locally known as Honky-Tonk Highway. This part of the downtown is the French Quarters of Nashville. Lower Broadway Street is the Bourbon Street of Nashville.
The bars, many owned by country stars like Dierks Bentley and Jason Aldean, have the kind of character and charm one would expect. Live bands played in nearly every bar, all day and all evening long - no cover charges.
And here is the kicker. The bands were wildly, insanely, unbelievably, amazingly incredible. The guitar pickers were studio-quality musicians. The singers were top notch. Even the house sound systems in every single bar, were perfectly balanced crisp clean and thumping. I was giddy going from place to place. The competition must be wicked. If all of these ultra-talented guys and gals, and there were tons of them, are playing afternoon honky-tonk stints, how good do you have to be to “make it” in Nashville? It gives me the shivers.
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Another one of those customer-pedaled street saloons. | |
All these bands were incredible. I guess the fancy country getups are a thing of the past. | |
My favorite - woody vines. | |
The world famous Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge. | |
The Broadway Brewhouse introduced the Nashville Bushwhacker. Don’t be fooled by this benign looking ice cream drink. It packs a wallop with 151 rum, white rum, chocolate liqueur, and coffee liqueur. Many other bars have copied it, but the Brewhouse was the original. We went to the Brewhouse for ours. | |
This was some kind a security guy dressed up to look friendly. I don’t know how “official” he was. | |
Once Wanda could tear me away, we walked up the John Siegenthaler Pedestrian Bridge spanning the Cumberland River for a terrific view of the river and the skyline. | |
This bridge is pedestrian only. | |
Next, it was Printers Alley, a small but historically significant nightclub area. During prohibition it housed thriving speakeasies. Later it became a place where country studio musicians could come and play jazz at night. | |
Pot isn’t legal in Tennessee, yet she was selling tins of something pot related. | |
Lastly, we drove to the Parthanon. Built in 1897 as a replica of the Athenian Parthanon, it is an art museum. We got there too late to tour the museum but we walked around the massive building. If the Greeks could build such a building five centuries BC, it is truly a shame that their civilization couldn’t survive. | |
Lastly, we drove to the Parthanon. Built in 1897 as a replica of the Athenian Parthanon, it is an art museum. We got there too late to tour the museum but we walked around the massive building. If the Greeks could build such a building five centuries BC, it is truly a shame that their civilization couldn’t survive. | |
From the Parthenon grounds we could see this tower from Vanderbilt University. | |
Celebrating Tennessee’s role in establishing the Women’s Suffrage Amendment. Tennessee was the final and decisive state to ratify the amendment. | |
James Roberson founded Fort Nashborough in 1779. | |
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Back at V-Jer, we had second-day chili waiting for us. Second-day chili is the best.
NOTE: I know that Nashville offers several venues like the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Grand Ole Opry, etc. We purposely chose to avoid those as we were only going to spend one day in Nashville and were looking for a quick overview. Each of those venues required a whole day.
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Glossary of terms used for newcomers: 1) V-Jer. The name of our camper. 2) Saturn. The name of our Van. 3) Duende. Our mischievous gremlin that breaks things. 4) Tata. The good gremlin that helps us fix Duende’s dirty work. 5) The Black Hole. This is what we call Walmart because every time we go in for just a couple of items, we come out spending way more than we figured. 6) QT. Quaint Town. 7) Little Buddy. This is what we call our Dyson cordless stick vacuum. | | | | |
