Nashville, TN (5/9-5/17)

A leisurely drive back down the mountain from Guntersville State Park and 2 hours later we hit Tennessee.  Seven Points Campground in Hermitage, TN is another Army Corp of Engineer park.  This park has only water and electric hook ups and no sewer hook up at our site.  There is a dump station at the entrance which we will have to use.  Could be interesting. 

We had 2 different sites booked for our 8 night stay as we added 3 nights a couple of weeks ago when we modified our route to include a Bourbon Trail stop.  This small campground is located on beautiful J. Percy Priest Lake.  It is about 25 minutes outside of downtown Nashville which is relatively close for such a lovely wooded setting.  Our first site was 42 which had a view of the lake, our second was site 4 which was a huge site near the entrance and bathhouse.  The camp hosts were super nice and checked in on everyone regularly.  

First site 42, view from our front windshield

Our first full day in Tennessee included a tour at Corsair Distillery.  It was recommended on one of the tourist maps.  We had a great tour with Carter and tasted a variety of their spirit offerings and he made a couple recommendations for food and music as he was a working musician in the area when not giving tours.  I have a sense that everyone in Nashville is either a musician, singer or songwriter, doing something else until they make it. 

We were also lucky enough to score tickets to the Tuesday night WSM Radio show hosted at the Grand Ole Opry.  The live performance broadcast over the radio has been going on since its founding in 1925, pretty incredible.  On this night, there were 8 performers.   While country music is not my first choice in genre, we got to see Keb Mo and the Old Crow Medicine show, which are two of my favorite blues and folk musicians respectively.  The theatre was still practicing social distancing and you could just feel the history and reverence of this place.  Great experience. 

Old Crow Medicine Show was awesome!

Socially distanced attendance.

Before we knew it, it was time to vacate our lakeview site and move to the interior site.  We packed everything up and headed to the dump station area.  It was a large crescent shaped paved area, but our 41ft RV does not bend like a truck pulling a trailer or 5th wheel.  Again, the camp hosts were very helpful to Mike and he negotiated the turn and took care of business.  Not all of it GLAMPING.

Mike backed in to site 4 with ease, but we soon realized that the site was extremely unlevel.  Being level is very important to effective deployment of the 4 slides of the RV.  Mike sized it up and determined we would have to drive up on blocks first, then deploy our leveling jacks.  This was a new experience as we had not had to do this anywhere before.  It was a bit nerve-wracking to get it right, but eventually we did and could settle in. 

Yikes, don't want to do this again.

Our tour guide at Corsair Distillery had recommended that on Wednesday we grab a burger at the Brown's Diner and then check out the "ladies night" music hosted by Vickie at Bobby's Idle Hour Tavern. Both are Nashville institutions.  Folklore has it that John Prine frequented Brown's and there were pics of him and the owner, along with many other Nashville stars and even Bill Gates.  This place was beyond vintage, and while Covid had left its mark on this place, we sat in the broken uneven bar stools and I had the feeling that John may have sat in my very seat and ordered a cheeseburger and fries like we did.  We didn't look too closely at the kitchen and the bar only served Pepsi products and Bud on draft, no liquor, but the cheeseburgers were super good and fries were fresh.  I was a little sad missing John Prine but enjoyed the walk down nostalgia lane. 

Yes, this sign says since 1927

Next we headed to Bobby's Idle Hour Tavern.  The small yellow building was about as long as our RV and a little wider.  It had a stage at the front which would hold 5 very talented lady musicians and singers throughout the night.  We were by far the oldest people in the place.  We grabbed a table up front and settled in for an unknown experience.  It was a tavern, not a gastropub, not a fern bar, not a lounge.  From the first lady vocalist invited on stage we were hooked.  There were 6 different singers doing a variety of country cover tunes.  The band was tremendous and added incredible harmonies to the lead singers.  It was an intimate, unique musical experience, we stayed to the very end. Carter gets a major thumbs up for both recommendations. 

We had crossed the Pearcy Priest dam on our way to the campground.  We found the visitor center one day and learned of a several mile greenway that you could bike or walk almost all the way to the Grand Ole Opry.  We packed a picnic lunch and trailered out bikes to the path after we played pickleball in the morning.  It was a spectacular ride.  My new e-bike performed very well and poor Mike was left to pedal his way up several long hills.  I kind of felt guilty zooming up the hills assisted by battery power, but I would not have been able to make the full trail ride without it anyway so I guess that is a plus. We stopped at a park on the route and had our lunch then headed back.  It was an awesome trail. 

River stop on our bike ride

View from our lunch spot.

We planned one night on Broadway, "the strip" in Nashville, Friday May 14th.  We did not realize that it was the first night that Nashville had lifted most of its occupancy and mask restrictions for bars and restaurants.  We started with a delicious BBQ dinner at Peg Leg Porker then headed downtown Nashville.  To say it was packed was an understatement.  It was practically like Mardi Gras.  Shoulder to shoulder everywhere inside and outside on the sidewalks. I had serious societal re-entry disorder that night.  We wore masks, practically the only ones, except waitstaff.  We found 2 venues with outdoor rooftop areas where we could breathe outside air.  

Good food, good story.

We had a couple drinks at each establishment, heard one good band.  It was a fun evening, but neither of us felt strongly that we would have to go back to that particular spot in Nashville.  It was worth witnessing the spectacle, much like Bourbon Street or Vegas maybe. 

Alley behind one of the bars on our walk back

We wound up our stay in the area with a sunny afternoon drive to Arrington Winery for some jazz on the lawn and a great hike in Long Hunter State park not too far from our campground.

 

On to Frankfort, Kentucky and the bourbon trail...

 

Lake Guntersville Alabama (5/3-5/9)

When we last left our intrepid travelers...they were headed into dark and stormy skies. Through some stroke of luck, we only had a light rain fall on us on our trip to Guntersville.  There were storms and dark shelf clouds all around and Mike had to hold tight to the steering wheel with a few strong wind gusts, but we made it with minimal rain.  

The trip to Guntersville State Park was mostly highway until we got on the roads to the park itself.  The two lane curvy, hilly road to the park let us know we were heading further from the flat lands of Florida. Mike drove them masterfully, while I sat quietly in the passengers seat. 

We rolled into the park in the early afternoon.  The first thing you see is the gorgeous lake stretching in both directions as far as the eye can see.  I had called ahead to confirm directions and confirm we could fit in the campsite assigned. Good thing I did.  We would have been a tight fit in our original site so they adjusted our spot and it actually gave us a view facing the lake. BONUS!  We settled in for a nice long stay.  

Spot E13

Stormy days can make for beautiful sunsets.

The campground was huge with many sections and nice amenities.  There was an actual tornado touch down there about 10 years ago and wiped out the trees and facilities so were new trees planted and new bathroom structures erected.  Our first day there was a wash out with rain but it gave us time to catch up on laundry.  

Aside from the very large campground, there was a lovely lodge up on the bluff and some chalets and cabins to rent.  We walked around the lodge one afternoon and took in the beautiful view.

As always, Mike found a great group of folks to play pickleball with in Guntersville.  Their courts are right on the lake.  Pretty nice spot.  There was also a fishing tournament on the lake near our campground.  Mike was awakened a couple of early mornings by the announcements and the boats racing off to their secret fishing spots.  I seemed to sleep through it somehow. 

One afternoon we headed to a place called Cathedral Caverns.  Below are some pics that gave it its name.  It was a lovely tour in a very cool place, truly a natural wonder.  We ended our day at the locals favorite, Top of the River for some fried seafood.  Not the healthiest dinner we had, but it was very good.

The cavern opening is 126ft wide and 25ft high

I tried to focus on the beauty, not how far underground we were.

This formation was called "cave bacon". Yes!

One of our fellow campers were riding their e-bikes around the park.  Mike struck up a conversation about them as we had been considering replacing mine with one. They were super nice and let us ride theirs around to try them out.  Just so happens his wife had ordered another one that would fit her better and she was selling hers.  Guess what I got?  Loving it so far. 

Janice's new e-bike. Mike still has to peddle the hard way.

This park offered some nice hiking opportunities.  We hiked the Terrell Trail which ended in a cemetery in the woods for the Terrell family it seems.  We were on the lookout for bears, but saw only squirrels and birds. 

We had tried to sell my bike while at the campground, but no takers so we donated it to a local charity on our last day. We played a little pickle ball and then before you know it, it was time to say goodbye to Guntersville and hello to Nashville, Tennessee. 

In the immortal words of Keith Jackson...Alabama! (5/1 to 5/3)

We finally crossed the Florida/Alabama line about an hour and a half after leaving Panama City Beach heading north toward Montgomery, Alabama.  The route, including one rest stop and one fuel stop was mostly 2 lane highway and the landscape started to show some hills and valleys as we drove.  We arrived a little later than our preferred time of 3 to 4pm due to the delay coming out of Panama City Beach.

Gunter Hill Park was a bit of a drive off the main highway, but we were pleasantly surprised by its beauty once we got to our campsite.  It was a long easy back-in site that backed right up to the lake.  This is our first Army Corp of Engineers park, we actually have another one upcoming Tennessee.  They are difficult to book a full week as they are always full on the weekends. I can see why.

Mike had scoped out a few things for us to do on this 2 night stop.  Upon arrival we got through our set up routine quickly and headed out to the Montgomery Motor Speedway.  It was literally right across the street from the campground entrance. It was a fun, if not loud, evening of stock car races. It was very well attended and had a quaint small town family atmosphere. It felt nostalgic and normal for a change given the past year.  The track was so close we could hear the cars racing well after we came back to the RV, but it was buttoned up by 10pm and all was quiet in the woods. 

The next morning we drove into Montgomery where we had tickets for the Legacy Museum, founded by the Equal Justice Initiative.  This museum displays the history of slavery and racism in America.  This very difficult and disturbing material was presented in thought provoking ways meant to broaden understanding of history and the path that slavery and racism has taken in the US. 

Affiliated with the museum at a separate location is the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.  We also walked these grounds which is a national memorial to commemorate the Black victims of lynching in the US.  Again, the scale of this memorial was sobering and you could feel the weight of the shame and sadness this place represents.

Montgomery is a city whose disgraceful past has defined it for many years.  It was once called the "cradle of the confederacy".  While the city transitions from that past to the future, there is much to learn from its history.  

Mike had also scoped out a local restaurant to try on our way back from the museum.  It was so crowded with locals, we couldn't get in.  We then tried two other restaurants in downtown Montgomery that were also packed.  We waited over an hour for a table.  Staffing shortage signs were posted at both restaurants.  We finally had a very late lunch at an Italian restaurant, it was good, but not the local flair we were hoping for. 

More storms rolled in overnight.  We buttoned everything up and got ready for an early, stormy departure to have some preventative maintenance done on Ruth. We dropped her off at 8am at the repair place and went to get some breakfast at Cahawba House. The Southern Biscuit sandwich (pimento cheese, fried green tomato and bacon on a homemade biscuit was a blast of South for your Mouth! 

The skies were black and brewing a storm, but we motored on our way to our next stop, Guntersville State Park, Guntersville, Alabama. 

 

Goodbye Panama City Beach and Bike Week (4/16 - 5/1)

Well... the weather improved slightly since my last post and we had some dry days, but it seemed to be constantly windy.

Regardless of the wind, we got out and explored some areas further afield with a drive through Mexico Beach, St. Joe, Cape San Blas, Apalachicola and St. George Island.  All were beautiful areas.  Mexico Beach was hit hard by the hurricane three years ago and is just rebuilding its beachfront.

While in Apalachicola visiting a friend of Mike's, we learned that this small town of 2,500 people heralded itself as the "Oyster Capital of the World". (unverified information)  However, it did appear on a sign as we entered town. We also learned that due to a confluence of events related to the BP Oil spill and a drought in Atlanta which caused over harvesting, the Apalachicola Bay and oyster industry has been closed to harvesting for 5 years.  It has basically shut down the industry.  Such a sad story.  We tried to help the economy with a tremendous dinner at a waterfront restaurant in Apalachicola before we headed back.  

The mound behind the little shack is oyster shells. 

Lighthouse at Port St. Joe

Fried green tomato appetizer. Gotta have my food pics.

We spent our last week and a half in Panama City Beach visiting with friends who were kind enough to come meet up with us. We had drinks, games a lot of laughs with our friends so the last week flew by.

The beginning of our trip was marked by crowds of spring breakers, the end of our trip was marked by Bike Week in Panama City Beach, THUNDER ON THE BEACH!   Mostly Harley riders began flowing into the campground pulling big toy haulers, many with more than one bike in tow.  It was a spectacle to behold.  It was also very loud as they rumbled out to festivities or back in from dinner. 

There were 3 sites set up across Panama City Beach to host the festival.  I assume that was some nod to social distancing...however all that did was distribute the bikes all over the city, some 10,000 I would suspect.  Every driving artery on and off the beach was a traffic jam. 

We saw some amazing motorcycles that could have also passed as works of art.  

We pulled out of Panama City Beach at around Noon on Saturday headed on to our next destination...Gunter Hill State Park.  This will be a rustic stop in the woods of Alabama.  We are looking forward to a little forest tranquility.