Monday 14th June, Nashville, - Memphis, Tennessee / Arkansas

Still in cowboy boot land. The town was a lot quieter on Monday, CMA is finished and we won’t have to line up for hours for the touristy stuff. What we haven’t mentioned so far is that Nashville had a huge flood about 3 weeks before we got there, a big section of the city was devastated including the KOA we first stayed at, apparently 3 quarters of the campground was under 8 ft of water, the toilets and showers were closed, yee gads even the pool was closed and only a small portion was back in operation. Also affected was the famous Grand Ole Opry… Nashvilles #1 attraction… The longest running Radio Station in the USA, which host mega concerts as well. They apparently had just finished the renovation and the floods wiped it all out again and so all we got to see was a grumpy security guard and some yellow tape. What was still to see was the Ryman Auditorium which is where the Grand Ole Opry evolved from, this has been a venue where most of the early country stars made their name, unfortunately the venue got to small in the end and so came the Grand Ole Opry. Ryman sat derelict for many years until it was restored, now it occasionally hosts country superstars who love it for its history and acoustics but is mostly here for the busloads of tourists traipsing through. In between stops we popped into a souvenir shop to get some aircon where we bumped into a lady from Hillsborough Auckland, just up the road from where we live (it’s a pretty small world). Next stop was the Country Music hall of fame, the highest honor a country star can aspire to. From what I can work out you have to be dead or all but to make it here. The building opened in 2001 so is the modern and trendy. We were told it would take 3 hours to walk through; we were done comfortably in under an hour, I guess that says a lot about the Milliken understanding of Country and Western music. Lauren (now a Taylor Swift superfan) was mesmerized by Taylor Swifts dress,(I dint quite get it). What was there was really well done, lots of interactive buttons and shiny records. A round feature room for all the inductees with their bronze face plaques immortalizes them for all time, finishes the hall of fame tour off.
Next stop Memphis a short 250 mile hop down the road, we made a slight boo boo on the address and ended up driving into Arkansas ( 5 minutes offor a bit where we soon realized that we had to head back over the Bridge to Tennessee. (At least we can add another state to our travel bragging book when we publish it).