Nashville, TN

On the 19th, we arrived in Nashville and finally met up with David as well as my dad who was in town for work. We had an excellent barbecue dinner at the famous Jack's Bar-B-Que restaurant, and then stuck around all night to bar-hop and listen to some good music - and it was a great success!

We visited 6 or 8 bars - some more than once - and heard a wide variety of music. Some artists were just okay, but some were fantastic and talented; highlights included girl-duo Smoke 'n Guns, hearing Johnny Hiland, and watching the Don Kelley Band play with 18-year-old Daniel Donato, who despite his age was one of the top 3 musicians I saw that night (Jenna, however, mostly focused on looking at the Jason Aldean wannabes.) I was mesmerized most places; I love watching great people play, and we were at some of the most historic, famous, and talent-drawing places in the country to watch people play. Many of the bars had some of the rarest and most interesting memorabilia I've seen. The music was great, the places were unique, and the crowd was surprisingly diverse. It was a great experience and so far a top 2 place to return to someday (along with Maine).

The benefit of Nashville stages - up close and personal

Downtown Nashville

We spent the rest of the weekend staying with Jenna and Brett's family friend Kathy outside of Nashville in Murfreesboro, TN. They had a nice house and a roomy place for us to stay (not to mention the ping pong table upstairs), so we spent some time relaxing there.

One weekend highlight (or something) was seeing the world's only life-size replica of the Parthenon. Yes, this is in Nashville, and no, I am not sure why exactly they chose to keep it. Originally built for a world-fair sort of event many decades ago, it was meant to be temporary, but was converted into a permanent concrete structure several years later. I was glad that our bewilderment at its story and existence was shared by people from the area as well.

To finish out our lesson in distilleries, we visited the Jack Daniels distillery in southern Tennessee. It was a neat tour, but it was much more commercialized and crowded than the others were.
 

Much of the process is identical to making bourbon, so the tour was very similar to the others. The exception is that Jack filters their whiskey through charred pieces of sugar maple wood that are burned, processed, and used on-site.

Jack Daniels is still made in the same place it was founded, and they still use the same water source - a tiny spring that (somehow) has been the source of water for every bottle of Jack Daniels and still is today.

I left really pleased with the weekend in Nashville and especially thankful to Kathy and her family for being hosts and letting us have a nice place to stay. We left on the 21st to start our trip into the Deep South to visit friends in Ocean Springs, Mississippi - hitting the campgrounds once again on the way down!