Ken Nelson

Location: Nashville, TN
Day 9 Photos.
Entire Trip photos.

I’ll post more details later…  Overview… lazy morning. Slept in. Cleaned up the RV a bit. Then towards mid-day off to Nashville’s full-size replica of the Parthenon.

It is located in Centennial Park and was first built temporarily for the Nashville Centennial Celebration. It was then rebuilt in sandstone during the 1930’s.  The Percy Jackson books that our entire family has read really triggered Jenny’s interest in Greek mythology.  So we put this on the schedule for her.

Here, Jennicus – the goddess of Daddy torment and/or the Goddess of Mac&Cheese, holds up the temple:

We toured the building, which is exact size, and also the art gallery (not Greek), and a room of statues of the Greek gods.

Then on to Daddy’s interest in Nashville… Music Row.

Broadway Street in Nasville. The home of “Music Row”. It was in full swing, getting ready for the Country Music Awards that are this week.   We ate at an open windowed bar called “Ribby’s”.  Pretty good barbecue. And the afternoon band, called the O’Sullivan’s played really good country music.

In Nashville, if you aren’t good you can’t even get the mid-afternoon gig at a bar. And these guys were good, singing wonderfully and putting out a good sound for two fellows.

We wandered down the street and came across actual paparazzi in action:

This is a press event for a country music performer from England named Lucy Silvas  She is the blond in the middle.

A block down we found Gruhns Guitar shop. 

That is the electric room. The acoustic room is in the back. Alas, I left with just a t-shirt.

We then returned the ladies, and with the Jeep barely coming to a halt to eject them, the boy and I headed off to Gun City USA in Nashville.  Frankly, they had a pretty poor selection for such a high falutin name, but the staff were friendly and we spent a 1/2 or so just chatting.  Then back to the RV park to swim, eat the last of our trout from Cooper Creek in Branson. Then, yee haw!, off to the Grand Ole Opry where we saw Little Jimmy Dickens, Charlie Daniels, Connie Smith, Trace Adkins, Whispering Bill Anderson, & Carrie Underwood. I liked it quite a bit. I’d be a regular if we lived in Nashville. My favorite was Trace Adkins. I like his music and he was also modest and funny on the stage. The show over at midnight. This was taken an hour or so before the show as we waited in the Opry complex. There was a live country band, a store, and 4 thousand people milling about:

Who is that crew with Toby Keith?

That night a huge t-storm rolled through at  2AM. Batten down the hatches!