Tennessee & North Carolina

Cory and I went to a wedding in Knoxville, TN, a few weeks ago. And since we were out that way, and since I've never been to that area before, we decided to make a vacation out of it. We landed in Nashville, TN, and headed straight to the Cumberland River to take a ride on the General Jackson. FYI - this is the river that flooded and did so much damage in Nashville a few months ago. It's hard to believe that the river rose almost 50 ft. in two days. I was pleasantly surprised with how nice the city looked and how much progress they've made with the clean-up efforts. Opryland is still closed due to damage from the flood, but the Grand Ole Opry show continued at the Ryman Auditorium (which was the original home of the Grand Ole Opry). We took a tour in the afternoon and then went back to see a show later that evening.

It was pretty neat to be part of a live radio show. They had commercials throughout the program and every once in a while the announcer would come out on stage and prompt us to clap and yell a little louder.

We visited the Country Music Hall of Fame.

And saw Elvis' gold piano...

And remember the show "Hee Haw"? Well, this is their original stage set. It looks a lot smaller in person.

We stopped at The Hermitage (i.e. President Andrew Jackson's house). Of course it was being renovated so pardon the tractor in front of the house.

Then we headed through The Great Smoky Mountain National Park. I want to have a lane like this in front of my house someday...

The Great Smoky Mountain Park is unique because it hasn't always been a national park. It used to be inhabited with early settlers (see one of their cabins below). The settlers agreed to sell their land to Tennessee and North Carolina and the park was born! It's the number one most visited national park in the U.S. - it has almost nine million visitors every year.

This mountain is what inspired the song "On Top of Old Smoky". It was hot and humid in the valley but nice and cool up here.We were also on a quest to find some good BBQ (we're sadly lacking for good BBQ here in Idaho). 12 Bones, in Asheville, NC, was definitely in the hood but was probably our number one pick for good BBQ.

We also visited the Biltmore Mansion while we were in Asheville (BTW, I could definitely live in Asheville - it was such a cute little town). The Biltmore is owned by the Vanderbilt family and is the largest house in the U.S. It has 143 rooms - 45 of them are bathrooms (I hope I got those stats right). AMAZING!!

And of course...what we went for...Dave and Katie's beautiful wedding! So glad that we were able to be there for their special day.

And we were also privileged to see the lovely Kate while we were there!

I'll end this post by saying that Cory grumbled through every tourist site that we visited. However, on the night we got home, he turned on the TV and watched the show "Road Trip". This is a series that highlights fun road trips that you can take (they tell you the best places to visit, where to sleep / eat, etc.). Well wouldn't you know, they just happened to be showing the EXACT trip that we had taken (start in Nashville, then on to Knoxville, then through the Smoky Mountains, over to Asheville, drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway, etc.). And then he thought he was pretty cool because he had just been to all of those places...