Scamp, Travel

Parton, Presidents, and the Parthenon: Nashville!

July 22, 2021July 22, 2021 by stacey

Since we are spending a few days in Music City, I thought I’d try my hand at a country song:

Oh I went for a ride but I popped a tire.

I tried to see the sights but then it rained for a hour.

Rain doesn’t really cover it. You know when you look at the radar map and it’s green, but then there are spots of yellow? And in those spots of yellow are smaller spots of red? And then, in the center of the red spot is a really hot-pink/magenta color that just looks bad, no matter what it means? It’s *that* kind of rain.

We’re camping on a lake, but I can’t swim.

Pro tip: if you can’t swim, you should paddle on sandbars. Then, if (when) you tip over, you can just stand up and not drown.

I see a lot of deer but I can’t catch them.

Do I have a future with the Grand Ole Opry, or what?

Let me take a moment to sing the praises of Cedar Creek Campground. 35 minutes from Nashville, on Old Hickory Lake with grass, space to spread out, and a picnic table! Expectations are simple when you live in a fiberglass box.

In Kentucky, our campsite was essentially an unlevel, cracked paved slab surrounded by mud, so this is a significant improvement.

Cedar Creek also has laundry, and a bathroom designed by the Army Corp of Engineers.

Nope, I’m not in prison. This is the shower block. Pressure’s good, though.

Beggars can’t be choosers.

Because I am a teacher, I can’t beat the early bird out of me, even in the summer. As a result we generally arrive in cities hours before anything is open, which means we get to check out local parks.

The 19th amendment is one of my favorites. Tennessee was the final necessary state to ratify the amendment, so I decided to hang with the monument in Centennial Park. I would have been a good suffragist.

Centennial Park in Nashville was a surprise, not because it houses the typical pond/fountain/glass tile dragon/walking paths/cute baby ducks/memorials—

—but also a full scale replica of the Parthenon.

Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Bill Monroe, and — Athena.

Yeah. The Parthenon.

Reasons to miss the 1800s: In 1897, Tennessee’s Centennial Exposition built it because they wanted to be as cool as Greece.

What made our visit to the “Parthenon” more surreal is that it coincided with the Pokemon Go Fest 2021. If you aren’t as cool as me, what this means is that the entire park was full of people congregated around all of the monuments (including the Parthenon), as this is where Pokemon creatures tend to virtually congregate.

And where human creatures congregate in real life.

On to Broadway! (Nashville, that is). Let’s go.

Music City should maybe also be called “bachelorette party city”.
If you want to wear a fur-lined cowboy hat and dance on a bus platform pulled by a tractor, this is the place.

Broadway in Nashville is neon, cowboy-boot-wearin’, Honky Tonk central.

Honky Tonk Central is 3 floors, 3 bands, and 3 bars; and there are about 30 other honky-tonks just like them. I love to people-watch and you can watch some fascinating people from the second floor balcony. My favorite was the guy with the trained cats. I gave him $5 for cat food.

It’s *Monday*.
Wait to see what is looks like on *Friday.*

I pushed on them to see if it was an actual piano (which would have made in my favorite thing ever) but it’s just paint. Learning to live with disappointment.

Because I am a child of Hee Haw, we also took a backstage tour of the Ryman Auditorium.

The Mother Church of Country Music. Thanks to the random guy in the blue shirt for walking right into my photo.

The Ryman was the original stage of the Grand Ole Opry, and since PBS was one of the 3 TV channels we had as a kid, was also part of my viewing repertoire. Hee Haw and the Grand Ole Opry— no wonder I am the way I am.

It’s also the birthplace of Bluegrass. So, you have to take a picture with the **Father of Bluegrass**. I made him. He’s a good sport.

I don’t believe in ghosts, but walking across the stage in the illustrious footsteps of Minnie Pearl, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Dolly Parton, and Bill Monroe left little tingles on the back of my neck.

The pale wood is the original stage. There’s a circle of the original Ryman stage wood on the stage of the new Opry building. History, y’all.

Posed photos taken in front of other people are awkward. This is proof.

After the tour, you can duck into Ryman alley, which connects the Ryman to Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, a purple and pink Honky Tonk where Willie Nelson and Patsy Cline would hang out after shows.

Unfortunately, now it’s literally just an alley that is full of garbage.

Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, where you can pay $9 for a bottle of beer. Yep you read that right, $9.

A bit more wholesome than Broadway is Music Row, where we peeked in the windows of RCA studios to try to get a glimpse of Elvis’s piano.

To tour the studio, you have to have an $11 dollar add-on ticket to your Country Music Hall of Fame $45 ticket. Props to the marketing geniuses that came up with *that* concept, but no.

For free, we decided to walk down to Owen Bradley Park, which celebrates the producer who brought the “Nashville sound” in the 1950s and ’60s. But we really went because of the statues and photo ops. Do it for the ‘gram.

Dolly on a dumpster. I don’t know her, but I have a feeling she would *love* this.

If you’re married to me, it’s easier if you just do it. This was outside Tailgate Brewing, so at least he has beer. #myhoppyplace

Last country music thing, I promise:

We went to the Grand Ole Opry!

You can’t have good hair down here. I mean, I can’t have it anywhere, but definitely not here.

I realized a few things at the show:

1. Three acts is the perfect amount of any band.

Turns out I know a *lot* of Gatlin Brothers songs, and I didn’t even know it.

2. Riders in the Sky are my new favorite western music band.

YES to bedazzled, fringed, spangled cowboys.

3. You know you’re old when you’re super-excited that the show is over by 9:00pm.

Balcony, Section 32, Row P. There’s a stage down there somewhere.

Okay, that’s it for music talk. On to… political controversy! I spent an afternoon at The Hermitage: 7th President Andrew Jackson’s plantation home near Nashville. The “People’s President” was an interesting guy: madly in love with his wife, hero of the Battle of New Orleans, and Indian Killer. But, a snazzy dresser.

Our fashion game has really devolved since 1829.

Happily, most of the rhetoric around Jackson is in the form of the 17-minute introductory video that comes down on the side of Jackson-the-hero. Then, you walk down a pretty path across the plantation for your mansion tour.

The mansion tour, where, because 90% is original from the time period, you can’t touch *anything*. Or, take photos inside. But I went in, I swear.

You can take zillions of photos of the gardens and the grounds. You can walk about a mile through the property to former slave quarters, the springhouse, and the former cotton plantation. Which I did.

The Spring House.It’s about .2 miles from the mansion, which feels like bad planning.
Build your house *next to* your life-sustaining water source.

I also saw a baby deer but it was 100 degrees and 98% humidity, so I wasn’t fast enough to take a picture. I was busy not swimming in the spring.

After the grounds walk, proceed into the bliss that is modern air conditioning, in the form of a cafe and gift shop.

There’s also a complimentary wine tasting at the end of the tour, so there’s that.

Ironically, Hermitage wines, for the president known by the Cherokee as “Indian killer” are made at Natchez Hills winery.

If you know me, you know how much I love the heat and the sun. If you don’t know me, that would be not at all and not even a little. But I like to be outside, and if you’re outside in Tennessee in the summer, you are dealing with it.

It’s only going to be as hot as the surface of the sun today, so I’m going paddling. There’s no logic to that.

I walked a half mile through air that shimmered with heat, and arrived at the marina to rent a boat and paddle out into the direct path of the sun to the sandbars on Old Hickory Lake.