Days 5 & 6 - Franklin, Tennessee

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Rob and Cami in Franklin, Tennessee on an 84 degree day. From coats and umbrellas to shorts and sunglasses--what a difference a day makes.

Guess what? We had to get up really early this morning! We had a 6:30 a.m. flight and we were told that the rental car had to be returned two hours prior to the flight, so morning came very early on Wednesday.

We flew into Memphis where we got to cool our heels for a couple hours. We had some juice and snack mix and tried to find a comfortable position to rest while we waited.

Fianlly we got on the plane and took the short hop over to Nashville. The 70 degree weather was fabulous in Tennessee--flowers were blooming, grass was green and leaves were growing on the trees!

We picked up another rental car and followed the excellent driving directions to Rob's brother, Kevin's home. Tanja had just returned from a trip to Milan, Italy the night before so she was home trying to recover from jetlag and Kevin had just finished up his classes at the college where he teaches. We sat and visited in their lovely home then we all took a little nap before dinner and Mutual.

Kevin created a masterpiece of a meal which we enjoyed immensely. Tanja is in the Young Women's Presidency so she took Cami and went off to their activity where Cami was able to reconnect with many the friends she made while she lived with Kev and Tanja in July 2007. While they were away, Kev took Rob and I on a tour of the area so we would have some ideas of what to do while were on our own tomorrow.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

This little Episcopol Church at the end of Franklin's Main Street made me think of Mitford. I expected to see Father Tim walk out of the rectory with his dog, Barnabas, any minute.
This church was on the Civil War Historical Tour

This morning we slept in! When we got up, Kevin and Tanja had already gone off to work and we took ourselves to downtown Franklin, which is a beautiful little town full of historical buildings and lovely shops. We parked the car and just walked from one end of downtown to the other. We stopped in many shops, ate an early lunch at Marydee's Bakery, and followed the Civil War map of sights around town including Fort Granger. We learned that Franklin, TN had been under Union occupation during the war. The Union soldiers set up this fort on the the highest point. To me it sounded like Nephite-style warfare. They dug an immense ditch around the fort, throwing the dirt into a 20 foot mound completely encircling the fort. Then they cut down every tree in all directions, sharpening the branches and setting them into the mound facing outward. They built lookout towers within the fort and the walls formed a triangle shape with the corners sticking out for rifle coverage of the walls. The only things remaining to this day are the mounds of dirt (completely covered with grass and wild flowers) and the ditch (also all grassy and green), but we could imagine what a muddy mess it must have been with all that fresh dirt and all those men living in tents.

Fort Granger had these markers around the sight showing the layout & history.

The old Factory was a hospital during the Civil War.

It's now an artist gallary and assortment of boutique stores.

That evening we met up with Kevin and Tanja at PF Changs for dinner and more visiting. It had been such a restful and relaxing day and the good food and company wrapped it up nicely.