Country Music Day

Giant guitar pick on Lower Broadway

David, Jackson, & Sue Freer from Australia

My new friends I'm showing around this week

Here in front of Opry House

The new look of Opry Stage (no barn background)

The Virginia Boys singing here

We spend the morning mostly on the Studio B Tour which was much better than I expected! The young girl leading it was great and I learned a lot. Lunch at Jack's BBQ and a walk around "The District" before a tour of the Country Music Hall of Fame. Then we drive to Opry Mills for a bite of dinner (tea for them) and on to the Grand Ole Opry which started out pretty weak but ended with a tribute to George Jones by one of his song writers. It was great! 

Tomorrow they do their own thing, probably General Jackson Showboat and downtown Honky-Tonkin' and dinner. I'll be serving as the photographer at a wedding with Elvis in the Rhinestone Chapel on Music Row.  :-) 

Thursday I take them to Parthenon, Bicentennial Mall Park, Farmers' Market, Antique Archaeology and maybe Puckett's Grocery for lunch. Then for dinner we will enjoy Irish food and music at McNamara's Pub in Donelson. 

They leave for Memphis Friday morning. I'll miss them! They are fun!

Aussie Visitors

Tonight David & Sue plus 15 yr old son Jackson arrived and I took them on a long walk from their Music Valley Road hotel to the Opryland Hotel, seeing all four hotel lobbies and sights. Then we walked back to Caney Fork Fish Camp for dinner where they all three had catfish for the first time and enjoyed it, particularly after seeing the live catfish in the tank. It was as well as the visiting, but the big surprise was them ordering Smores for desert and getting to roast their own marshmallows over a little fire pot and putting them on the chocolate bar between two graham crackers. The loved it and had never heard of such a thing!

Tomorrow we return his rent car then do the country music thing: hall of fame, district, music row, maybe Ryman tour or Studio B tour, then top it off with the Grand Ole Opry tomorrow night. Off to bed late tonight after midnight.

A Great Day!

I took Alice Yeager to church today which I hope helps her get adjusted to living out here at McKendree Village. At church I enjoyed the people coming through Door 3, deep discussion in our Sunday school Joshua Class, another wonderful worship service and message from Revelations. aAfter lunch with Alice here at McKendree I biked the Stones River Greenway to the dam with several interesting photos. I'm sharing two here plus the barn photo I took on my way back from dinner in Mt. Juliet at a new to me restaurant, Los Compadres. A happy and relaxed day!

Kayakers on Stones River

 

Dam Reflections

 

Barn in Mt. Juliet

 

 



Biked 10 Miles Today!

Today I biked the other direction from Lebanon Road to Shelby Bottoms, 5 miles on the greenway and then back. Each direction I crossed the Stones River twice and the Cumberland River once. It was beautiful with wildflowers everywhere and I forgot my pocket camera. Shame on me! This was my first time to bike this segment. The next big challenge will be to bike the greenway all the way downtown. I used to do it from Bicentennial Mall State Park to Shelby Bottoms, so now I put them all together and have lunch at Farmers' Market before returning. Some day! It would be about 30 miles round trip.

Seek Adventure with Eyes Open!

Cathedral Plaza, Campeche, Mexico, Jan-2013, by Charlie Doggett

"We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open."

                                                                                                                           --  Jawaharal Nehru

I got this quote from this week's image from Dewitt Jones
http://www.celebratewhatsright.com/images

You can get on his email list for a weekly inspirational photo and quotation. They are all good! And I think my photos are usually pretty good too!   :-)

Shadows in the Sun

After a very full and busy day, I thoroughly relaxed with another great movie, Shadows in the Sun from Netflix. A young writer and publisher goes to a little village in Italy to talk an older, retired writer into writing again and just happens to fall in love with his daughter.

Enjoying Spring at Home

Beautiful day on the deck!

Biking Stones River Greenway

Today I biked 6 miles on the Stones River Greenway. See photos on my Nature Notes Blog.

Hiking at Long Hunter State Park

Today I hiked the 2 miles around Couchville Lake in Long Hunter State Park. For photos and report see my NATURE NOTES BLOG

Frist Center for the Visual Arts Today

Between a 11:00 AM doctor's appointment and a 2:00 PM church activity, I worked in a visit to 4 new exhibits at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville. The two biggest and most wonderful exhibits I was of course not allowed to photograph: "Rembrandt and the Dutch Golden Age" is large and magnificent! You could spend a half day with just it! Then equally significant to me after my last year tour of "Ancient and Colonial Cities of Mexico" is a first class exhibit of "Art of the Ancient Americas: The John Bourne Collection."

There is also an interesting exhibit in the Contemporary Gallery that is electronic and you get to imerse yourself into the visual projected on the wall. Quite unique! It is "Camille Utterback: Tracing Time/Marking Movement."

And on the parking lot plaza entrance is a giant sculpture by Rachel Owens called "Inveterate Composition for Clare" pictured below (the only thing I could photograph!).   :-)

Oh yes! That's our old Union Station to the left of the Frist Center.

All downtown on Broadway! Places for discerning tourists!  :-)