Joe's New Blog

Nothing special, this is just my third effort at writing a blog about my life and what goes on in it: Hobbies, cooking, work, maybe the occasional book or DVD review, and so forth. Nothing really noteworthy, but this is sort of a little subset of my world...

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Rusty old car...

We first passed this truck towing a rusty old hulk of a car yesterday afternoon, just after we entered Tennessee. Because of our various stops and such, we just passed it for the third time, so I figured I'd snap a couple of pictures. The guy driving looked at me like I had three eyes, but such is life.

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I think we're only about half an hour or so from Virginia. There have been a few signs saying that there might be some congestion near the border, because it turns out that's where the Bristol Motor Speedway is located. I didn't realize that. I guess there must be some event going on there today. Hopefully it won't be like it is around the Texas Speedway near Fort Worth. I guess we'll see in a bit...

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Nearing Virginia...

After having a few little delays getting out of Nashville, and having to stop and get gas a short distance from that city, we've had a pretty uneventful drive through Tennessee. I drove most of the morning, until we stopped a little outside of Knoxville to switch drivers. Traffic has been light again, but that's not too surprising with it being Sunday. It just seems like it's a little lighter than we expected even for Sunday. Not that I'm complaining, of course.

We did have a little bit of a delay around Knoxville, but that was mostly because of some construction happening on the main freeway. So we had to take one of the loops around the city, and it was just a little bit of a traffic issue because of everyone else having to take the alternate routes, too. And there are just a few idiot drivers out there, too, but it hasn't been as bad as Dallas is most of the time.

We stopped at a truck stop just past Knoxville, for gas and to switch drivers. Now we're driving through some mountains, enjoying the scenery, snapping pictures, and getting near the Virginia border. We should be there in the pretty near future...

Some of the scenery:

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Heading out of Nashville...

We're just about to head out of Nashville. Again, it's a little later than we expected to go, but such is life. I never could get on the internet last night (hence my writing the entries offline and posting later). That was one of a couple of issues with the room. We also couldn't ever get the shower to work. When I called the front desk to see what the trick was to getting the shower to work, there was no answer there. And at this particular place, the front desk is quite a little distance from our room, so I didn't feel like walking down there to wring necks. So the girlfriend had to take a birdbath under the tub's faucet. With that, we also found out that the tub didn't drain worth a shit. I think there's probably still water in it now, nearly half an hour later.

Also, on our trip home last night, we took a little bit of a back way to the motel, and found out that it's pretty squarely in the industrial part of town. Looked like the kind of place where drug deals would have been happening within a few blocks most of the night. I guess that explains why they have a security guard out in the parking lot. Oh well. I guess we'll probably pass on Knight's Inn from here on out.

Anyway, time to wrap it up and hit the road...

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Saturday, March 21, 2009

A fun night in Nashville...

The girlfriend and I drove down to the Sportsman's Grille in the Village, a nice little bar-and-grill type restaurant right near Vanderbilt University. We met the girlfriend's friend from Stumbleupon, Dethmonger, and his lovely lady Fontanelle, for dinner and drinks after an interesting drive through town. I was trying to use the GPS to get us there, and it was something of an adventure. In large part, that's because I always seem to forget what's might right and what's my left when I'm under pressure to immediately say what direction to turn. Fortunately, though, we did make it there without getting in any accidents or anything. Once again, there was very little traffic on the road, which helped a lot.

It's always nice when you meet someone in real life who you've been acquainted with on the interwebs, and it's especially nice when those people aren't total freaks. In the case of Dethmonger and Fontanelle (* see note below), they were not only not freakish at all, but they were incredibly nice people, and the girlfriend and I had a wonderful time talking to them for an hour or so. We got an invitation to crash out in their living room if we happen to be back to visit Nashville, and we'll almost certainly take them up on it rather than stay at the Knight's Inn again.

Unfortunately, we didn't really have a whole lot of time to go visit a lot of the places they suggested this evening, because both the girlfriend and I are pretty tired. We did drive back through the touristy area of town, where all the honky-tonks and bars and such are located. It was something of a traffic jam there, which was about the first time we've encountered any real traffic on the trip. I snapped a few pictures of things out the window, but unfortunately we forgot to get a picture of our newly-met friends while we were enjoying dinner. We did get a little note from Fontanelle to give to Xian and Mike, who we should be seeing when we make our way up through Rhode Island.

Anyway, pictures of random buildings and stuff in downtown Nash-Vegas follow, and it's off to bed with me so we can get a decent start and try to make it to DC tomorrow...

Oh, and note that both Fontanelle and Dethmonger do have real names, but they don't have them posted on their blogs, so I didn't feel that it was my place to post them. If you're interested in their names, drop them a line and ask. They're good folks, and if you're nice, they'll probably tell you...

The Customs House near downtown. The girlfriend liked the architecture...
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Different view of the Customs House, showing some of the neat windows...
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I liked the double-spired AT&T building you can see in the background. You can also tell the circus-like atmosphere of the downtown by all the neon in the foreground...
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The Sommet Center, where the Nashville Predators hockey team plays, and a general entertainment venue. Snapped quickly as we passed...
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Just a little street scene, with some nice buildings in the background. (Well, I think they're nice, and it's my blog, so there...)
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This is the stadium where the Tennessee Titans play football, but I'm not sure of it's official name. I think it's on the opposite side of the river from where we were driving...
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We got stopped in traffic in front of BB King's Blues Club...
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And that's all for today. Further travels tomorrow, though...

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End of the day's driving...

After our stop for lunch in Arkansas, we continued on through the flat eastern end of the state. We stopped at one little rest area on the way, hoping to find some of those pretty pink trees that we'd been passing on the way, so I could get a close-up picture of some of them, instead of the blurry shots from the car. Of course, there was a big patch of them on the side of the road about a quarter mile from the rest area, but all there was actually at the stop was one pathetic little specimen:

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Of course, they had some other trees planted around the place, including this one nice-looking pink tree, but it wasn't the same kind as the ones that I'd been trying to photograph:

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Overall, it was another nice little rest area out in a not-too-urbanized area, but it certainly wasn't anywhere near the quality of that first one we stopped at. We switched drivers at the rest area and continued driving through some rural areas of eastern Arkansas until we got near Memphis. We stopped in West Memphis both to get our bearings a little and for me to pick up a couple of Arkansas souvenirs. We initially stopped at a Cracker Barrel, but they didn't have anything to speak of. So we stopped at a little truck stop, and I got a couple of postcards and a shot glass with Arkansas stuff on them.

And then it was into Tennessee...

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Here's the Memphis skyline, a little blurry...

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And the Mississippi River, as we crossed it...

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The Pyramid...

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And the sign for Memphis, Home of the Blues and Birthplace of Rock 'n' Roll...

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In general, most of what we saw in Memphis wasn't all that great. It was kind of a squalid-looking little city from the freeway, with a lot of houses that looked like they could have been cute, but they just hadn't been kept up at all. I'm sure there are some nice parts to the town, but it's definitely not going to be all that high on the list of places we want to go back to. On the plus side, the traffic was still pretty light, even though we went through the city between about 4:30 and 5:00 local time. We figured it would be pretty high traffic, being near rush hour, but we really didn't have any problems getting through the city.

A little while after leaving town, I took this picture down the freeway...

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Traffic was like this most of the way between Memphis and Nashville, and the scenery was a lot like this, too. Just lots of leafless trees, and a lot of flat terrain. We stopped for gas and switched drivers after Memphis, and I took us most of the way to Nashville.

We stopped a little to the west of Nashville so we could figure out where a motel might be and so the girlfriend could drive us into town. They had a bunch of white flowering trees planted near the gas station where we pulled over:

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I'm not sure what these are. The flowers looked rather pretty, but they stunk quite a bit. Dogwood? I'm really not sure.

Anyway, we made our way into Nashville pretty easily, although we did get a bit lost in the downtown area. We saw the capital building from a bit of a distance, but I didn't get a chance to get a picture because I was trying to navigate us through town to our possible motels. We finally got here to the Knight's Inn, just across the river from the downtown area.

The motel seems like kind of a bare-bones sort of place, but I guess it's not too awful. Unfortunately, it sounds like there are a lot of loud people around, so we might not get all that great a night's sleep. I guess we'll find out, though. For now, the girlfriend is trying to find out where we're going to meet her friends for drinks or something of that nature. Guess I'd better get myself ready to head out on the town...

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