Days 7 & 8 - Nashville, Tennessee

Friday, April 2, 2010

Today Kevin and Tanja took off work to spend the day with us. Cami had made plans with some of her old Tennessee friends so we left her at the house and headed to Nashville for some sightseeing. First, The Kev took us to O'Moore College where he teaches Fashion Design and Fashion Construction. O'Moore is a private arts college in the old part of town. The home and grounds were once owned by a wealthy Tennessee heiress who wanted art and beauty taught to the young people of her community. Her old home is now the administration building on campus.

O'Moore College where The Kev is an Associate Professor.

Our next stop was the Loveless Cafe. I had never heard of it before, but apparently I was the only one who had not. The place was PACKED and we waited for more than an hour to be seated for breakfast. Luckily the old motel next to the old road house cafe has been converted into shops so we browsed and I bought some postcards and wrote and addressed one to Bryan while we waited. Once we were seated and served we decided the wait was worth it because the food was great...especially the biscuits, yum!

Back on the road we drove on in to Nashville. Tanja and The Kev have both had opportunities in the music industry so they are very familiar with the many recording studios, artists residences, and music businesses so they drove us around 'Music Row'. We were able to see the Roy Orbison building where Tanja is headquartered along with the homes & studios of many other notable country music artists including Randy Travis (whom Tanja was an angent for some years back). We went to the Ryman (The original Grand Old Oprey House) in the old part of town. Nashville is a strange assortment of old and new sections sitting on different levels. I've never seen a city like it before.

The Roy Orbison Building in Nashville

Late that afternoon we returned to Franklin. Rob and Kevin went off on a 'redneck' hunt (don't ask) and Tanja and I stayed at the house and I showed her how to get registered and started indexing. She took to it like a fish to water and has already done over 700 names! We ate and talked late into the evening waiting for Cami to return from a date. We got into bed late after packing all our bags and preparing for our departure tomorrow.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Another really early morning, but this time we had someone get up and see us off. The Kev and Tanja helped us load our bags and get out the door by 5:00 a.m. to catch our 6:30 flight.

For some reason there was a long delay getting through security and we were some of the very last ones to board our flight before take off. It was a long, bumpy flight home and landing in cold and snowy Salt Lake City was kind of a shock to our systems after the warmth we had enjoyed the last few days.

Our Kevin was waiting for us in the Jeep as we collected our luggage. We drove to Bountiful and ate breakfast and then on home listening to General Conference. It is good to be home, but all this week I couldn't stop myself from thinking, "One week ago today we were doing...." and then dwelling on how much fun we had seeing our loved ones and some amazing parts of our country.

Jimmy the Frog looking out the window, sad to see the trip ending.