Saturday 9 September 2006
A beautiful morning – 76° outside and the sun was shining. Hugh barges were cruising up and down the Mississippi River. Dick was up early and went for a quick walk.
Instead of jumping straight back onto Interstate 40, we decided to drive around under the railway bridges. It was in this vicinity that Dick had landed on his around the world helicopter flight and he wanted to go down and walk on the banks of the Mississippi.
There were two huge old railway bridges across the Mississippi at this point – we had actually stayed the night on the Western bank of the Mississippi. Unfortunately while we were there no trains came over the bridges.
We were very fortunate to get back onto Interstate 40 via a workman’s track. It probably saved us 20 minutes of extra driving. We had been on a dirt road for quite a while driving around under the approaches. It was pretty obvious that the low level area is inundated by floods when the river rises – that’s why the bridges are so high.
As we headed east along Highway 40, vehicles carrying huge loads overtook us at 70 mph in the left hand lane while we hugged to the right. These were marked “oversize” and some were up to 15 ft wide. One vehicle had a huge transformer on the back. We had never seen so much transport wealth – there were more trucks than cars driving in both directions at about 70 mph. It was interesting to note that the trucks were all immaculate. They looked brand new, were beautifully clean and chromed. We think it will be slightly different when we get into Siberia!
The other interesting point was that there were lots of shredded tyres on the sides of the road. Obviously the trucks must use retreads that break off from time to time. We had never seen so many shredded tyres anywhere else in the world.
At one stage one of the oversized vehicles overtook us again. It had stopped at the truck checking station so we got ahead, but then it caught up and overtook us. We were cruising along at 60 mph in the Earthroamer and we thought that was pretty fast, when this oversized load vehicle, together with its accompanying vehicle with a flashing light, went past at 70 mph – possibly even faster!
We stopped at Cedar Grove for fuel. It was now down to $2.77 per gallon. It was interesting to note that since the last refill we did 12.24 miles per gallon – not bad, considering our 7 tons.
It was a little overcast as we headed towards Nashville – we were not listening to genuine American country music but to The Seekers on the iPod.
At 12.20 pm we crossed the Tennessee River and we were on Interstate 40, which has been renamed the “Music Highway” – for obvious reasons. It’s the main track into Nashville.
We turned off the Highway at West Haven and headed towards the town of Franklin to see Ian and Libby Cook – friends of Hayley’s and ours. We drove to their home, which is in a new housing estate.
Ian was at home with their son Oliver but unfortunately Libby was away at work. We had a cold drink and enjoyed talking to Ian and playing with Oliver. Ian gave us some really good maps of the Nashville and Tennessee areas.
At 2.45 pm we were back on the road again and headed towards Nashville. When we got to Nashville, we turned off I40 directly onto Broadway and drove down right in front of the Convention Centre and the Country Music Hall of Fame. We turned right and found an almost completely empty parking area.
We spent the next two to three hours walking around Nashville. What a fascinating place! Not many street buskers but virtually every “pub” had live music. Eventually after walking into many of these noisy pubs we found a lovely quiet restaurant called the Merchant. Pip sat beside the window where she could see the VIPs going into the Opening of the Symphony Centre – it’s Gala Opening. There was a red carpet, many TV film crews and great stretched limousines pulling up at the front steps. All the guests were dressed in dinner suits and colourful long evening gowns.
We visited the Country Music Hall of Fame and we loved the fact that most of the attendants were volunteers. At one stage Dick did a live interview with Macca on Australia All Over back in Australia. The Country Music Hall of Fame is very well done and it had a display of all the Gold Records that have been issued – there were walls and walls of them. There was also a very good video interpretation and models of some of the original recording studios. The only Australian we saw was a small exhibit on Keith Urban, everything else was American music.
After dinner, we walked over a closed road bridge to the eastern side of the Cumberland River – the river which goes through the center of Nashville.
On the other side of the river was a huge stadium where there was a gridiron or American football match being played between the Tennessee Tigers and the Kentucky Racers. We bought tickets for $15.00 each and went in. This was extraordinary! First of all the American Gridiron is so different to Australian football. All the players are kitted out with the most incredible protection equipment so that they can’t get hurt. Imagine if that happened in Australia – all the players would be called “sissies”.
On our side of the arena, which was the Tennessee Tigers, virtually everyone was Afro American – in fact of the thousand or so spectators only us and a few others were not Afro American. But you can’t say this is racism because we were treated just like anyone else. It was obvious that the Tennessee Tigers were supported by the black people in Tennessee.
There was the most extraordinary band – the Americans do this really well. It was the band form the Tennessee State University. Not only did the band play at half time, but during the match the band would suddenly stand up in the stand and start playing. The match was pretty exciting but reminded Dick a bit of the old Rugby Union where you have lots of times when the referee whistles, for reasons that no one appears to know what for, and everyone stands around – almost as boring as cricket. We would prefer Aussie Rules any day.
We wandered back across the bridge and a huge barge came up. It was six barges in total – three tied together. It was almost impossible to believe that the tug driver could get the barges through the narrow openings in the railway bridges that were further north.
When we got back to the car park it was completely full and we had great difficulty in getting the Earthroamer out. We managed to maneuver it very carefully after nearly removing a tree by reversing into it so we could get at an angle to get the vehicle around.
We had read about Opry Land. It appears Opry Land was an original Country Music Radio Show, perhaps even hillbilly. It was originally run from the center of Nashville but the venue has now been moved further north by an enterprising business group.
We had heard there was a special show on at 9.30 pm, so we keyed the location into the GPS and headed off for our first night drive. It was about 25 minutes of driving through the most incredibly complex interstate roads and by-ways until we ended up at Opry Land. We found the carpark for the hotel which allowed campers to park and then walked over to the hotel and managed to get a free shuttle to the Opry Land Plaza.
We found the theatre and bought two tickets. Imagine this? We bought our tickets at about 9.20 pm and the theatre was full and I think we got the “house” seats – H12 and H13. The music was “bluegrass”. It was a fantastic show and well worthwhile. The show finished at 11.30 pm and we got the shuttle back to the hotel and walked in light rain (it rained during the performance) to the Earthroamer and stayed the night in the carpark of the exclusive hotel.
We put on the air conditioning (which works off the battery) as it was hot and humid. It cooled the vehicle down as we discussed what a fantastic day it had been.
415kms Today 10,631kms Total
Click here for the next day.
Click here to return to the Smith’s Overland main index page.