Living Our Dream

Nashville Part I: Ryman Auditorium

Ashland City, TN - Events of friday, July 20 to Monday, July 23, 2012

The next stop on our summer travel schedule was near Nashville, TN at the Lock A Corps of Engineers Campground outside Ashland City. Last fall when we stopped at Nashville, we stayed on the eastern side of the city at Cedar Creek COE Campground in Mt. Juliet, TN. This time, we decided to try a COE campground that was located right on the Cumberland River on the northwestern side of Nashville. Lock A is a little more remotely located than Cedar Creek; but with our goal of a more relaxing year of travel, it seemed to be a good choice.

We took our time departing from Parkers Crossroads because our drive was only around two hours plus a few extra minutes for a fuel stop. We pulled into Lock A shortly after noon.

Lock A Campground has paved roads. About half the sites are gravel, and the other half of the sites are paved - not just the pad, but also the driveway leading to the pad as well as the generously-sized patio.

Our site at Lock A Campground

View looking down the road past our site

As with most COE campgrounds, Lock A has only water and electric (30/50 amp) hookups. Most of the sites are nice and wide, but a few are a little closer together. We were in a relatively small, quiet loop off by itself, but there wes also a larger loop where the sites along one side back up to the Cumberland River.

Lock A campground is a short distance upstream of Lock A on the Cumberland River. There were some pleasure boats, but there were also a few large tow boats and barges. We took a few walks, and we usually ended up down by the river.

Cumberland River looking upstream

Last fall, we didn't do much sightseeing because we had trouble with our satellite internet and ended up spending a lot of our time gathering information and making the decision to switch to Verizon Broadband. Therefore, even though we were in a bit of a remote location during this stay, we did end up doing a little more sightseeing than we had originally planned.

We made a Walmart run on Saturday, relaxed most of Sunday, then headed into Nashville on Monday to see Ryman Auditorium. Ryman Auditorium is a 2,300+ seat auditorium that used to house the Grand Ole Opry.

Ryman Auditorium

Downtown Nashville has numerous parking garages and parking lots, but they also have some on-street, metered parking. We found a space right across from the entrance of the auditorium. Metered parking is 25 cents for 10 minutes ($1.50 an hour), which isn't too bad.

Ryman Auditorium was originally built as the Union Gospel Tabernacle in 1892 by Thomas Ryman, who owned a fleet of riverboats and several bars in Nashville. Ryman reportedly was tired of hearing about well-known evangelist Samuel Porter Jones preaching against gambling and drinking - two of the very things that made money for Ryman on his riverboats and in his bars. Ryman and several friends attended a revival meeting held by Reverend Jones with the intention of heckling the preacher. However, Ryman ended up getting saved and built the Union Gospel Tabernacle so Reverend Jones, or any other preacher, would have a proper church building any time he came to town. After Ryman's death in 1904, Reverend Jones proposed the tabernacle be renamed Ryman Auditorium.

Statue of Thomas Ryman

In addition to being used for revival meetings, the Ryman Auditorium, or The Ryman as it is frequently called, was used as a venue for speaking engagements, political debates, concerts and various types of performances. Bob Hope, Katherine Hepburn, the Zigfield Follies, Helen Keller, President Teddy Roosevelt, Houdini, Will Rogers, Mae West and W. C. Fields have all performed or spoken at the Ryman Auditorium. Even with all those famous people, The Ryman is best known for serving as the home of the Grand Ole Opry from 1943 until 1974.

The Grand Ole Opry was a weekly radio program that featured live music and skits. It started in a 5th-floor radio studio in 1925 in downtown Nashville as the WSM Barn Dance. In addition to being broadcast on the radio, the show also drew audiences who wanted to see the show in person. As the popularity grew, the Opry moved to several larger venues until it ended up in The Ryman in 1943.

In 1974, a new 4,400-seat theater was built east of Nashville that also was part of the Opryland Hotel complex and a theme park. Ryman Auditorium sat mostly vacant until the 1990s when it was restored and reopened as a more intimate concert venue. They have 200 to 250 live shows a year, and they are not all country artists. The theater is also frequently rented out for taping music videos and for photo shoots. The Ryman even hosts the Opry in the winter.

New entrance to The Ryman that was part of the 1990s restoration

The Ryman has self-guided tours for $13 and you can add a behind the scenes tour of several dressing rooms for an extra $4. We opted to add the behind the scenes tour, and we're glad we did. The dressing rooms that are included in the tour have themes featuring well-known country stars like Johnny Cash, Hank Williams and Minnie Pearl. The behind the scenes tour includes many interesting facts and anecdotes about some of the past stars of the Grand Ole Opry.

Because The Ryman is an active performance theater, there are no behind the scenes tours on days when there is a performance scheduled because the dressing rooms are being readied for the performers who will use them later in the day. Unfortunately, photography isn't permitted in any of the dressing room areas, but we were allowed to step onto the stage near the end of the tour and take a photo.

We can say we appeared onstage at the Ryman Auditorium.

As you can see from the photo above, the seats in the auditorium are pews, which fits with the beginnings of The Ryman as a church. Also in connection with that heritage, The Ryman is known as "The Mother Church of Country Music."

After our behind the scenes tour, we continued on with the regular self-guided tour. We watched the video that gives the history of The Ryman, then we roamed around the facility to view the exhibits that include costumes and instruments of many country stars.

Dresss and suit belonging to June Carter Cash and the "Man in Black"

Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton's costumes

Minnie Pearl's hat complete with tradmark price tag

Minnie Pearl was the character played by Sarah Colley Cannon. Sarah began her career producing and directing plays and musicals for local organizations. She switched to a comedy act playing Cousin Minnie Pearl in 1939 and was signed to appear on the Grand Ole Opry in 1940. Minnie Pearl was a regular with the Opry until Sarah suffered a serious stroke in 1991. Sarah Cannon died of complications from a second stroke in 1996.

The story about the price tag on Minnie Pearl's hat was interesting. Sarah always put fresh flowers on the straw hat that was part of her costume. One day she was running late and didn't have time to stop for flowers, so she sent someone from the theater out to buy some artificial flowers. When the flowers arrived, she hurriedly wrapped them around the hat and stuffed the price tag in among the stems. While running around the stage during her comedy routine, the price tag slipped out and hung down. The audience thought the tag was funny, so from that day on, Minnie Pearl's hat had a price tag on it.

The balcony of the Ryman was added in 1897 in order to increase the seating capacity for a reunion of Confederate soldiers.

View of the stage from the balcony of The Ryman

There is an alley beside the Ryman. Across that alley are the back doors of the honky tonks on Broadway, which is the next street over. Performers at the Ryman used to slip over to one of the honky tonks for a quick drink before and/or after the show. Also in the alley is the stage entrance and the steps where two young brothers used to sit and play hoping someone would notice them. Chet Atkins eventually gave them an audition, and the Everly Brothers went on to become rock and roll stars.

Steps where the Everly Brothers were discovered

Before heading back to the car, we walked on down to Broadway to see the honky tonks. Broadway reminded us a lot of Beale Street in Memphis with all its bars and neon signs. We were particularly interested in seeing Tootsie's Orchid Lounge because it was a hang out for the likes of Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline, Mell Tillis, Roger Miller, Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams and many more back in the day when the bar used to be called Mom's. Mom was a no-nonsense woman, but she frequently lent a helping hand to many a struggling country singer.

Tootsie's Orchid Lounge

We listen to country music, but we don't know a lot about its early days. It was interesting to learn about some of the stars and how they got their start and to learn about the history of the Ryman Auditorium and the Grand Ole Opry. We have a little more sightseeing planned, so stay tuned.

Nashville, TN

Mt. Juliet, TN - Events of Wednesday, Oct. 12 to Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2011

As we said in our last post, the weather was cooling off in the Louisville area, so we continued heading south to Cedar Creek Corps of Engineers campground near Nashville in Mt. Juliet, TN. Cedar Creek has paved roads and gravel sites with 30/50-amp electric and water hookups. The sites are a good bit closer together than we usually see in Corps of Engineer campgrounds, and our loop probably had the closest spacing of all the loops. There are about a dozen lakefront sites and another dozen across the road from those that have much wider spacing, but the lakefront sites are hard to get on weekends, and they have too much shade for our rooftop satellite dish. The photo below shows our site at Cedar Creek.

Since we were going to be at Cedar Creek over a weekend, we made advance reservations. It's a good thing we did because, although the campground was only about 1/3 filled when we first arrived on Wednesday, it started filling up on Thursday afternoon because local schools had Thursday and Friday off for fall break. Kids have only been in school less than two months, and they need a break already? Anyway, the photo below shows some of the other sites on our loop later Saturday afternoon after the campground filled up.

Speaking of our rooftop satellite dish, we used Google Earth when we made our reservations to pick out a site with a clear view of the southern sky. After we arrived and leveled the motor home, we pushed the button to deploy the satellite dish. In the meantime, Paul went about connecting utilities outside and Margery put out the slides and worked on setting up the inside. After we finished up, we noticed the satellite dish had found the proper satellite, but we did not have a signal lock. Uh-oh. The same thing happened at our last stop, but we thought it was a problem on the satellite provider's end because it cleared up and we got a lock after a little while.

Unfortunately, we did not have the same luck this time. After a call to MotoSat technical support, we determined that our transmitter had probably gone bad. A replacement part costs about $200, which isn't all that bad considering how much we use the internet. However, the big problem was we would have had to order the part, and since we were staying at a Corps of Engineers campground for a week, there would be no good way for us to receive the part.

We have been reading about Verizon Broadband for some time, and we have toyed with the possibility of switching; but as long as our satellite internet dish was still working, we had no real reason to make a change. However, now that we were facing the inconvenience of being without internet for a week or more while we figured out how and where we were going to have the repair part shipped, we had an incentive to consider Verizon more seriously. The problem was, without an internet connection, we couldn't research our options online, and we didn't even have a good way to locate a Verizon Wireless Store. So we grabbed our laptop, hopped into the car and drove toward Nashville. We found a McDonalds that had Wi-Fi, so we did a little quick research and found a Verizon Wireless Store nearby.

To make a long story short, after much deliberation, we decided to discontinue our satellite internet service, and we will now connect to the internet via Verizon Broadband using a Pantech USB modem. Since we have two computers, the modem will be plugged into a Cradlepoint wireless router so both computers can connect at the same time. We also considered Verizon MiFi, but the MiFi is battery powered, and we didn't want to worry about having to keep it charged.

As it turns out, Nashville is a 4G area, and we are thrilled with the improved speed of our internet connection. We know 4G coverage is still limited, but it is growing all the time. We will probably have 3G much of the time for the foreseeable future; but 3G should still be at least as fast as satellite internet in most cases.

When we first started full-timing, there were wide gaps in wireless internet, and it was not as fast as satellite internet. Since satellite internet is available EVERYWHERE as long as your dish can get a clear view of the southern sky, we went with satellite in spite of the fact we had to buy expensive equipment to do it. Now, with the advent of 4G, wireless broadband can be much faster than satellite. We know there are still areas of the country that don't have 3G, much less 4G coverage, and there are some areas that have no wireless internet coverage at all. We will have to deal with that when we run into it. Hopefully, we will be able to find campgrounds with Wi-Fi at least some of the time in those areas.

Not having to depend on our rooftop satellite dish for our internet connection will broaden our campsite selections. We were always limited to sites with few or no trees. Our satellite TV shares the rooftop internet dish, so we will still have to be a little careful about too many trees. However, we will be able to use our portable TV satellite dish on a tripod in the event our site has too much shade for the rooftop dish.

On one of our information gathering trips to the Verizon Store, we saw a sign for the Hermitage, which is President Andrew Jackson's home. Since it is located fairly close to where we were staying, we decided we were interested in seeing the Hermitage once we got our new internet connection up and running.

Cedar Creek is nice and quiet during the week (except for the times when the maintenance crews are mowing); but it was crowded and zooy on the weekend. We usually don't do much sightseeing on the weekend, but we needed a break from the smoky campfires and the noise in the campground, so we decided to visit the Hermitage on Saturday. The photo below shows the front of the Hermitage.

Andrew Jackson, who was the son of Scots-Irish immigrants, was born in 1767 near the border between North and South Carolina. Jackson was a military courier during the American Revolution when he was only 13. During this time, he was slashed with a sword by a British officer, and Jackson developed a deep hatred for the British. Andrew Jackson eventually got revenge when he later defeated the British at the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812.

Jackson's father died before he was born, and Jackson became an orphan at age 14 when his mother died of cholera. Although Jackson's legal education was scant, he learned enough to become a frontier lawyer in the late 1800s. He moved west to an area that was located in what was to become Tennessee. When Tennessee became a state a few years later, he was elected Tennessee's first U. S. Representative. He also served as a Senator and as a Tennessee Supreme Court Judge. During this time, Jackson prospered as a planter and merchant. His toughness and aggressive personality earned him the nickname "Old Hickory."

Andrew Jackson acquired a plantation he named the Hermitage near Nashville in 1804. He and his wife, Rachael, moved into a two-story, log farmhouse on the property. Between 1819 and 1921, the Jacksons built a two-story, eight-room, brick, Federal-style mansion on the property. The two-story log house was then disassembled and rebuilt into the two, single-story slave quarters shown in the next photo.

Andrew Jackson was elected the 17th President of the United States in 1828, and he served two terms. His wife died a month after the 1828 election. During the campaign, his opponents called him a "jackass," a name he actually didn't mind. He was later one of the founders of the modern Democratic Party, and the donkey became its symbol after being popularized by political cartoonist Thomas Nast.

In 1834, a fire severely damaged the original mansion, and Jackson had the house rebuilt in its current Greek Revival-style. The columns on the front are made of wood, but they are painted to look like the stone columns of a Greek temple.

There is a guided tour of the home, but, as is usually the case, photography is not permitted inside. After Andrew Jackson died in 1845, his stepson continued to live at the Hermitage. Later, the Hermitage was sold to the state of Tennessee, so about 90% of the furnishings in the house are original.

After the tour, we paused for a photo behind the house near Alfred's cabin.

Alfred, who was born in 1812, was one of Jackson's slaves who lived his entire life at the Hermitage. Alfred stayed on as a caretaker after Jackson's death and even after the Civil War. He worked as a guide when the mansion was opened for tours in the late 1800s.

We also toured the garden.

Although most of the flowers had faded, there were a few like these dahlias still going strong. The orange color was almost blinding in the bright afternoon sun.

Andrew and Rachael Jackson are buried in the garden. Alfred is also buried there off to the right side. You can just barely see his headstone above the top of the railing in the foreground.

After we toured the mansion and grounds, we went through the museum. The museum has some of Andrew Jackson's personal items and numerous of old photos. We probably should have visited the museum first because the museum was laid out in chronological order, and it would have helped establish the historical timeline for the rest of our visit.

There is a lot more to see in the Nashville area, especially if you're into country music. However, since we have shifted from sightseeing to relaxation mode, and since we spent the first two or three days in the area trying in vain to get our old satellite internet working and then running around researching and setting up our new Verizon Broadband, we decided to leave the rest of the sightseeing for another time.

We watched a lot people leave the campground on Sunday. However, quite a few stayed, and quite a few new people came in later Sunday afternoon. Fortunately, the sites near us remained empty so we didn't have any more smoky campfires nearby.

We relaxed for the remainder of our time at Cedar Creek and spent a good bit of time surfing the 'net. The weather forecast was predicting a general cool-down in the east, and the temperature around Nashville dropped like a stone on Tuesday afternoon. Our scheduled departure on Wednesday to head farther south was well timed. Stay tuned to find out about our next stop.