Our Rather Simple Yet Chaotic Life

Vacation was nice, not relaxing but fun. Traveling with a 7 year old boy and a 17 month girl wasn't what it was cracked up to be. The drive was only about 7-1/2 hours to Franklin Tennessee but when you have a screaming little girl that does nothing but scream for an hour strait, it makes the drive seem like 15 hours. The never ending "I'm hungry" and "are we almost there?" started about 20 minutes into the trip. We left about 4 pm on Monday and arrived in the Nashville area about 11:30 local time. It's really a pretty easy drive other than the kid issues.

Tuesday, we headed over to my Aunt's house and really just visited and chilled out which was badly needed after the long drive. My aunt lives in a pretty cool planned community that has parks, lakes, a community center complete with media room, art room, game room (with free video games) and a huge pool. The community also includes a few shops, doctor's offices and the retail area is expanding to include a grocery store, drug store and other shops. The homes are all less than 5 years old but they were built to look like they have been there for decades. All in all, a really cool place to live it seems. We also took a stroll though the downtown Franklin area which is a quint old civil war town where one of the bloodiest battles of the war took place. There is a ton of history in the area.

Wednesday was site seeing day. We picked up my aunt and headed toward downtown Nashville. On the way to town, we took a little country music home tour and stopped in front of Alan Jackson's house (or should I say mansion) to snap a picture. As I got out of the car, a white SUV was pulling up to the gate and leaving the grounds. Guess who was driving the SUV? Non other than Alan Jackson himself. He just kept driving and gave us a wave as he pulled out of the driveway. After our little brush with a country music star, we headed to The P arthenon. Nashville built an exact scale replica of the Greek Parthenon for the Tennessee Centennial celebration in the late 1800s. It was build as part of a large display of temporary buildings for the celebration and was to be torn down after the exhibition. After the celebration was over, the city decided to keep the Parthenon for future generations to enjoy. The temporary structure was rebuilt to be permanent and is now used in part as a museum that includes artwork dealing with the Greek Parthenon. There is also a huge statue of Athena on the second floor which is said to be the tallest indoor statue in the U. S. All in all, it was a neat visit.

After the Parthenon, we headed into the downtown area to eat and to explore a bit. We walked down the main tourist drag and ate at The Wildhorse Saloon. The Wildhorse is also a concert venue and what a coincidence but Hootie and the Blowfish were performing there that night. After lunch, which by the was was not bad but nothing to blog about other than the couple of Yazoo pale ales I had during the meal, we headed down toward Tootsie's Orc hid Lou nge. Tootsie's is a dive bar that is across an alley from the Ryman Auditorium better known as the original home to the Grand Ole Opry. I guess the acts that were to perform at the Ryman would have a couple of drinks at Tootsie's and then warm up in the alley before they performed. My aunt said I had to at the very least walk inside to take a look. I did one better than that, I had a shot of Jack, then looked around. On the way to Tootsie's, we had to pass at least 8 other small bars and all of them had live music and it was only 2:30 in the afternoon on a Wednesday afternoon. If we didn't have the kids with us, we could have had a blast going from one bar to the next listening to the bands all day and all night long. In some of the bars, the bands start at 10am everyday! After the walk around downtown which did include a quick stop at the Ryman, we headed back to drop my aunt off at home and head back to the hotel. On the way to drop my aunt off at home, she got a text from my cousin saying they saw Keith Urban and Nichole Kidman at the mall and they got pictures to prove it. The were shopping at Bath and Body Works. Of course, Lisa and I had to go to the mall to see if there were any other celebrity siting to be found and there was not. That evening, we had some very tasty pizza for dinner from Pie in the Sky Pizza.

On Thursday, we were on our own because my aunt had to work a 12 hour shift at the hospital. We headed to Opryland hotel and the Opryland mall and spent the day wondering around. The hotel is as cool of any hotel I've ever been in and the mall was huge. While at the mall, we visited the Stingray Reef. We all got to touch the stingrays and I actually fed them which was a strange event to say the least. We were all exhausted after walking for 5 hours or so and shopping so back the hotel we went. I took Shawn down to the pool and before we knew it, both kids were fast asleep.

Friday morning we went to Dotson's for breakfast. Dotson's is located in downtown Franklin and is frequented by several of the country music industry stars. I had a good ole country breakfast that included, eggs, biscuits, sausage gravy, potato casserole, grits and country ham. The breakfast wasn't bad at all but I could make grits just as good and the portions were smaller than what I am accustom to up north. The big draw for me was the country ham. I had never had country ham and was curious to see what the difference between it an the typical ham I know and love. All I can say is the ham was major salty due to fact it is salt cured. Wow, was it salty. I would compare it to a giant piece of bacon with a bone in it. Not bad but different! After breakfast, we went on a plantation tour of Carton Plantation. The tour was pretty neat. The house was used as a hospital for the confederate army during the battle of Franklin during the civil war. The family was at home during the battle and assisted many of the doctors in treating the wounded. There was so much blood in the house that you could still see blood stains on the floors in the bedrooms! It is said that the morning after the battle they found 4 dead confederate generals laying on the back porch which was the second most generals lost during any battle during the war outside of the battle at Gettysburg. Considering the battle at Franklin lasted only about 5 hours and the fighting at Gettysburg last a few days the loss of life and generals was as bad a loss as the Confederate side saw during the entire war. The entire story is interesting. It is also said that the plantation is haunted to this day. After the tour and since it was approaching triple digit temperatures, we headed back to the hotel to swim for the rest of the afternoon.

Friday evening we had dinner at a place next to our hotel called Jonathan's Grille. Really nice sports bar/restaurant. I had the grouper dinner which was as good as I have ever had and Lisa had a steak which was much better than any of the steaks we had during our Chicago trip last month. The best part of the meal is that we found out there were half price appetizers and 2 for 1 draft beers during the time were were there. I don't think I've seen 2 for 1 happy hours since I was too young to be drinking! I need to move to Tennessee!

Saturday, we packed up and headed over to my aunts to spend an hour or so with her before the long drive home. The kids were much better on the way home by the way. I really want to go back a visit again soon. There is so much more that we could have explored. I really want to take a few more of the plantation tours and maybe a Franklin street tour the next time I go for a visit.

Sunday was spent getting back to normal life. I did a bunch of yard work, Lisa went grocery shopping and did some laundry and then we had dinner over Todd and Jill's place.