Nashville Nights (and days)

Five months ago, a lot of Nashville was under water after the city had 15 inches of rain in two days! Good grief! That's more precipitation than we've had at our home in Avondale for two years in a row. We stayed at the Nashville KOA which had been completely remodeled, and the bathrooms and laundry were all new. They even had to replace some of their cabins which had floated away when the Cumberland River ran over its banks and came into their campground.

Our first foray into the city of Nashville was a Nights and Lights tour. It included a tour of the downtown area, a barbecue dinner and then some time doing "honky tonking" as the driver put it. As we passed by the only German restaurant, this southern man tried to say "wiener schnitzel". The operative word is tried to......it just didn't come out right. I guess you can't speak German effectively with a twang!

The sidewalks were crowded and it seemed that most of the establishments here were bars(honky tonks) that had their own band. There was noise, people and lots of cigarette smoke everywhere. For smokers, it would have been a plus. No need to light up one of your cigarettes, just stand somewhere and inhale deeply!

Sandy and I took a liking to this cute fella who had rather large ears.
Also on the streets were lots of people doing their own thing: mimes, singers, "twangers"and everything in between. This trio even had their own hound dogs with them. It has been a long time since I had seen someone playing a washboard! It looks like they came in to the city from the hills very recently.
We spent some time on Sunday afternoon exploring and wound up in the Tennessee Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park. Jerry, Sandy and Don are standing on a huge cement map of Tennessee that shows all of the counties, towns, landmarks and rivers.
Jerry is kneeling by the very small town of Belle Eagle where he was born and spent his childhood in.
On Saturday afternoon we toured The Hermitage, home of President Andrew Jackson. The home has been well preserved, and all of the original furnishings remain inside. No photography is allowed inside, otherwise I would have been tempted to take a few pictures of this elegant home. Even most of the original wallpaper is still on the walls. One upstairs room had wallpaper that had been ruined. The historical society here found the same exact wallpaper in a home in France in 1993. They purchased and restored it before it was applied here.
Below is the log building that housed Pres. Jackson and his family from 1804 to 1821 before he had the brick home built. The cabin started out as two stories, but when he moved into the new home, he reconfigured it into a one story cabin for some of his slaves.
Flowers still are planted in the one acre formal garden that sits next to the mansion.
President Jackson and his wife Rachel are buried in the back section of the garden. General Jackson had a strong sense of family and deeded a small section of the garden to serve as a family cemetery. A great grandson and great granddaughter are among those buried here.