Nashville, a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there

Comments posted later by Megan in RED.

Megan has been hounding me to write this for about 1 week now. So, since I have some time, I'm going to. (Hounding? It seemed more like a suggestion, since you he wakes up at 4 AM)

My parents came from California to visit during the second week of September. We blessed Vivian (see the post here), and then planned to drive to Nashville (not sure how far it is, check out this map) to visit my brother, sister-in-law, and their new baby, Mason.

The drive to Nashville went particularly well, considering that Milo and Viv were strapped into their seats for 10 hours.

We took the standard I-40 route through lovely (I think) Little Rock, Memphis, and Nashville, stopping at several fun attractions along the way.

We even got to see this: (This may have been the best part of the trip for Jeff)

(Look really close)

Nashville is a really cool city. One of the things that got me was the amount of traffic. For some stats, see this Wikipedia page. Notice that Nashville is the 2nd most populous state in Tennessee, but the largest metro population (1.5 million; FYI, OKC Metro is 1.2 million). That's an impressive statistic.

Rob & Katie's baby, Mason is just adorable, although he's nowhere near as cute as Viv (sorry guys, it's true): (I may have to agree with Jeff here!)

In Nashville, we visited The Grand Ole Opry:

And a Civil War battlefield, where the North and South fought The Battle of Franklin (see this link too), and plantation called Carnton (see this link too) that acted as the hospital following the battle:

We took an interesting (that's saying it nicely) drive to Hohenwald, TN (here's the driving directions) to visit a historical sign. Since I had to go, without much knowledge of the person (William S. Berry), I think you should visit this site to get the facts. P.S., if you're ever going to go to visit the marker, first know that there's an elephant sanctuary outside the town, and that Meriwether Lewis died and is buried 7 miles east of the town in Grider's Stand (we didn't see any of that, but I'm over it). Here's the picture and the GPS coordinates:

Unfortunately, there was non-stop rain for our entire trip. The rain began at the Arkansas border, and didn't stop until we'd entered Oklahoma again. We didn't get to see as much as we would have liked, but there was a refreshing feeling from the trip.

Our small family drove back to OK, while my parents flew in comfort (if Southwest is comfort with a layover & 8 hours of flight time).

We stopped in Memphis and found a cool museum called The Fire Museum of Memphis. It's a little pricey ($6 for adults, $5 for kids, OUCH), but Milo and Hannah both loved it:

I've learned (or confirmed) a couple things after this trip:

1. Rain is a good way to ruin any great vacation (we spent our 1st trip to Hawaii in the rain, and our last trip to California) (Why do we have that kind of luck?)
   
2. Kids do best on long road trips if you turn up the radio really loud (it drowns out the noise)
3. Milo will (reluctantly) get into his car seat the day after you return from the long road trip
4. A stop at a good burger joint, after an unexpectedly long drive, is a great way to change anyone's mood
5. At 12:30 a.m., and only 30 minutes from home, that "2nd wind" of driving and the desire to finish never comes. It's only will power that will keep the car from careening into the concrete barriers or off of some cliff.

We had a fantastic trip, and are very thankful to my parents for letting us tag along, and tolerating the responsibility of "chief entertainer" while we ignored our children.

I love Jeff's posts, he manages to make me laugh. Now if I could just "hound" him into posting about his parent's visit here in OKC.