February 16, 2017 - Mammoth Caves and Nashville

The day started out pretty good. About halfway between Lexington and Nashville we stopped to take a guided tour of the Mammoth crystal caves. They are the longest in the world running over 400 miles. We took the short tour of 1 1/2 hours because we had more things to see. It was awesome in the caves, there were lots of stalactites and stalagmites, deep tunnels and domes as well as etchings in the walls made by the running waters.

We arrived in Nashville around 2:30 and decided to look for a hotel before heading out to sightsee. Well there was a big convention at The Grand Ole Opry so no hotels around that area. They gave us directions for another part of the city and this time we couldn’t see any hotels. To make a long story short after driving around for over 2 hours we decided on the first hotel that we had talked about but had decided not to take because it was too far from the center of town. Needless to say, that finished our sightseeing for the day. I did get to see The Grand Ole Opry but from afar because no one could get close, everything was blocked off.

I wanted to see the full-size replica of the Parthenon but after all that driving it didn't seem as exciting anymore. Anyway, we’ve seen the real thing. We did get to see some really nice homes, definitely upper upper class. The houses were huge, manicured and well maintained. Makes you wonder who lives there.

With all the driving around today, we ended up staying at a hotel about 30 miles past Nashville. On this trip, Jacques wants to sample ribs from different parts of the country. There was a rib place next door to the hotel so guess where we had supper. They were really good.

Tomorrow we only have 2 hours of driving to get to Memphis, so we should be able to visit quite a bit. We hope to arrive there by mid morning.

Oh, I forgot to mention yesterday that the manager at our hotel last night asked if we had started building our wall yet. When I said that I thought it was a wall between the states and Mexico, he said that he had heard us Canadians had plans to build a wall and make the Americans pay. I didn’t ask who he voted for.