Nashville Cats! (a good song and great city)

I’m back! There wasn’t much to talk about from Dover but now the race is over and we are back on the road again (I think there is a song title in that). We got up late on Monday morning. We figured to take our time getting ready to leave and give the Monday morning leave people a chance to clear the area before we hit the road. Well, that didn’t work. There was a steady line of traffic all morning. There were lines at the dump stations and the traffic out Leipsic Road was backed up beyond our campground. We got everything ready and headed out. We checked out the dump stations on Lot 10 and decided that we would take our chances with the unmarked dump station in front of the Casino. WRONG! It took us 45 minutes to get out onto 13 and when we pulled into the parking lot in front of the Casino, we realized that other people had the same idea that we did and we sat in line there for an hour. Dumped, we headed north to Smyrna. We had ordered a delivery of medicine to be delivered to Smyrna but when we got there it was not there yet. Hmmm, now what?? We decided to stick around for another day as we needed the medicine. We headed out looking for a movie theater but found a state park instead. We got a site there and laid low for another night. It was a nice place. They had been full of race fans for the weekend but had pretty much cleaned out on Monday. They had nice spots in the trees with a nice pond. There was a swimming and boating area across the pond and a nature trail around the pond. We settled in and built a campfire. We sat around the fire until well after dark. In the morning we got up and took the hike around the pond. It was 3 ½ miles around. Great way to start the morning. We had breakfast and Cheryl called the post office that let us know that our package had arrived. We picked up the package and headed out.

We let the computer do the navigating again. I looked over the instructions and thought them to be sound but I apparently did not read them very well or something and they took us directly through the middle of Washington DC. It was an adventure but it worked out fairly well and we were soon clear of the city and back on the interstates. We drove through Lexington, KY past all the great horse farms. There were just miles of beautiful fields with the traditional white fences. When you saw horses, they were just the most beautiful animals. Soon we were entering cave country. It is amazing how many caves are in this one area. Many are commercial but the biggest is Mammoth Cave located in a National Park. Many of the other caves are connected to Mammoth Cave which is listed as the biggest cave in the world (measured by the length of the passages). We were concerned about the time and what time Mammoth closed for the day in the off season. We pulled into the parking lot (saw several turkeys on the way in). The parking lot was not very full and we were afraid that we would be too late. Well, no worry. Somewhere along the line we had crossed a time zone so we had plenty of time. We had a choice of a couple of tours. The staff would not commit to which one was the better tour so we did a quick scientific study and took the first one on the list (we would have to wait an hour for the second one). Mammoth Cave was formed differently from the other 2 caves we visited. They were formed by water getting into the limestone through the raised water table and were dried out when the land was raised (you have to remember that the west was under an ocean. The ground was pushed up to form the mountains and put the layers of limestone above the water table. In Mammoth, an underground river flowed through the limestone forming a line of caves that once held the river but are now dry. There are some areas that are wet from water dripping in through cracks from rain on the surface. The entrance we entered by was in the bottom of a sink hole. They had quite a bit of rain in the days just before we got there so the wet areas of the cave were dripping and wet. There is one area of the cave called Frozen Niagara which is one of the wet areas. There are a couple of rooms of stalactites and stalagmites and an area that looks like a frozen waterfall or a series of organ pipes. It is quite spectacular. You can see the damage from the early commercial cave tours where the tourist was allowed to take souvenirs. They carved their names into the walls in some places and took stalactites as souvenirs. This section of the cave was later bought by the government and added to the existing park. We have seen three cave systems on this trip and each one of them was different. They were all spectacular in their own way and different.

We found a KOA nearby and headed for it. It was kind of a crappy little campground but we called it home for the night. The next morning we headed off early for Bowling Green. For those of you who are not familiar with Bowling Green Kentucky, this is one of the most famous “car places” in the USA. It is the home of the Corvette. GM has their smallest manufacturing plant here. They assemble the Corvette (170/day) and Cadillac XLR (their version of the sports car) (15/day). We also visited the Corvette Museum across the street. That was a nice visit but not being a Corvette aficionado made it less exciting that I would have felt if it were a Cobra Museum. There was one neat thing though. You can order a new Corvette and come to Bowling Green to pick it up yourself. You can watch the car being made, follow it through the manufacturing line. You can start it for the first time yourself and drive it off the assembly line. Then you can pick it up over at the museum. There were a half dozen sitting there awaiting pickup. They listed the owners name and the car’s birth date.

After the tour, we headed south for the Tennessee border. At the Welcome Center, we stopped to pick up info and a map. We saw a list of the performers scheduled for the Grand Ole Opry. We continued on towards Nashville. We had made reservations to make sure we wouldn’t get stuck in a park without wifi or TV or some way to get into town (if you could call Nashville a town). The other advantage of this is that I could plug an actual address into the navigation system so it would take me right to the door.

We pulled into the campground with no effort at all. We have gotten to recognize the times when the navigation system has a meltdown. We registered and then went over to the Gray Line Desk (right in the office) and signed up for a bus tour of Nashville complete with a tour of the Ryman Auditorium (former home of the Grand Ole Opry), the Country Music hall of Fame and the Legends Club where they have live music all day long and where a lot of country entertainers got their start. We also bought tickets and transportation to the Grand Ole Opry (I needed a place to debut my new boots). The tour was good. They showed us around the city and told us a lot about the city and its history. They let us loose on the Ryman Auditorium. There was a film about it and we were let loose. As things go, there was a truck unloading and a bunch of roadies setting up the stage for a concert. I asked one of the roadies who they were setting up for and he told me Alice Cooper. Oh, I said, a night off from the Stones?? That was last night, he said. Oh, a one shot deal? Ya, he said. Alice was signed only for the Churchill Downs Show.

Everyone oohed and ahed over the hall and its country music roots and I spent most of my time looking over the equipment they were unpacking. Back at camp, we spent the rest of the afternoon unwinding and relaxing. Then we got dressed. I got to wear my new black cowboy boots, black jeans, a Carhart shirt and my Stetson hat (black also). You know what?? Not one person looked askance at me (or Cheryl, she has a hat, just no boots(yet)) and no one laughed. That may not be true when we get back to South Berwick. We caught the bus and off to the Grand Ole Opry we went. We had a lot of fun. The Bluegrass awards were in town this week so the show was heavy in Bluegrass. Lots of banjos, mandolins and fiddles. The music was fast and lively and we were pretty much unable to watch without clapping and footstomping.

The fun continued this morning. At Ernest Tubbs record store (and music hall), they have the Nashville Cowboy Church every Sunday Morning. We walked the two miles to the hall and attended. The service was broadcast worldwide on the radio (as was the Grand Ole Opry last night). The first half was all music. They have a house band made up of studio musicians and then have guest come in and play. They had a guest singer from a gospel family from Canada, another singer from Nashville and the Red Hot Mamas (a female duet of country singers). The music was great and then the sermon. The preacher has been doing this particular gig for 15 years. He was a Southern Preacher with an evangelical bent. He was very good. The people were friendly and the morning was time well spent. We went into the record store afterwards. Ernest Tubbs tour bus was like a museum in the store. It was pretty neat.

We watched the race this afternoon (we also watched Tiger’s victory in England and that wonderful patriot’s victory. We now have the Redskin’s game on (and they just won). It was a particularly great afternoon. Gordon had problems, Johnson got caught speeding on a pit stop and finished way back and Mark came in third. Tiger won easily and the Pats had their greatest rushing day since 1993. Tony won the race and Joe Gibbs won his football game (Joe Gibbs owns Tony Stewart’s car). Seems like a pretty good day to me. I made spaghetti sauce with meatballs and cooked it all afternoon. Now I am caught up on my writing and have to get ready to head out tomorrow. It is off to Talladega where we will settle into a campground and check out a new track. For you readers who don’t care about racing, that is about all there is left to the trip. We will attend the races at Talladega. We just found out that Juan Pablo Montoya will run his first Stock Car Race at Talladega. He has been racing F1 for McLaren. McLaren did not have a great season and Montoya was vocal about their shortcomings. Feeling that they were getting ready to fire him at the end of the season, he quit and signed a contract with Chip Gnassi and Felix Sabbatas in NASCAR. He will be driving a variety of cars in different organizations to give him some practice to develop a style for driving the big stock cars. He came up through the Indy Car Circuit and moved up to F1, the most technically advanced race cars in the world. They are small, powerful and extraordinarily nimble. On the other hand, the Nextel Cup Cars are big, heavy and much less than nimble. It should be a great time listening to him on the scanner as they talk him through the practices and the race itself. On Saturday, we will attend the truck race (first ever at Talladega) and root for Mark Martin. Hold on, it should be fun (there probably won’t be any wifi there so you dear reader will just have to wait for the last installment.