Charleston, South Carolina

Arriving in Charleston we once again felt the full force of the heat and humidity of the south. High 90's and humidity the same. But what an incredibly beautiful city. Sitting right along the Atlantic Ocean it is surrounded by low lying habitats--mud flats as we'd call them here in the northwest. But these flats are often vast fields of Spartina, a plant that belongs there but that has become a pest here in the northwest. It actually looks lovely here in Charleston--green, spiky plants that do equally well in and out of the water and thrive in the harsh, saltwater environment.

We drove around town quite a lot as the heat was just unbearable for walking. We did get out and about in the morning seeing a couple of the lovely antebellum homes that line the streets in the nicer areas of town. On our first day we decided to head over to Mt. Pleasant and Sullivan's Island and stopping by Gullah Cuisine in Mt. Pleasant. We'd heard great things about this place. The food is not terribly different than the meat and three's we'd been enjoying in much of the south. The spicing was a bit different but on the whole I thought it rather bland. We tried the fried chicken and the other usual suspects--mac and cheese, greens, cabbage, and there was a mild nod to creole-style cooking, too. Dirty rice and sausage, shrimp gumbo and the like. But it was all much blander than the creole food I had in the New Orleans region. On the whole, I wouldn't go back, but we drove right past it so why not.
The evenings brought in amazing thunder storms the next few days. The lightening would light up the sky and thunder would crash all around us, even right over head.

Day two we visited two antebellum homes in the downtown Charleston area. The Aiken-Rhett Home was a place that must have been beautiful at one time but is being left in its current condition I guess so people can see what a mess some of these homes have become. The guides said that it was being kept in its current condition on purpose and is not being restored but rather just kept stabilized. I just thought the whole idea was crazy. I told one the guides that if they didn't want the home to continue to degenerate they would have to close it up, air condition it and even then they would have to continually work on the exterior to keep the ravages of termites, rain and humidity from further damaging the home. We also visited the Russell House a few blocks away that had been restored and was being properly maintained. The home and the gardens were beautiful. We had a very knowledgeable tour guide who walked us through. One of the most intriguing architectural points in the home was the free-standing staircase completely unsupported.

For lunch we headed across town to Bertha's Kitchen. This Road Food recommended place was nearly impossible to find but Leslie's instincts kicked in and she was sure if we just drove down what looked like a street that I was sure we should NOT drive down, we'd find it. Sure enough, there it was. Fried chicken to die for, juicy, spicy and hot out of the fryer. Great greens, mac and cheese, corn bread, the usual suspects again, but this food was just terrific! A definite yes if you're in Charleston, but good luck finding it. Take a GPS!

We decided to head on a little further down the road and stop in Beaufort (pronounced beeyou-fert) where several popular films have been made including Forrest Gump and The Legend of Bagger Vance, Prince of Tides, The Great Santini and The Big Chill to name a few. Beaufort is also home to Parris Island, the U.S. Marine training base on the edge of town.

Before arriving we stopped at a road-side Carolina Cider Company, a cider shop where we tasted some ciders and other locally produced foods. We loved the deep fried peanuts. These peanuts don't need to be shelled. Just pop them in your mouth and eat them shell and all. Very cool! We also bought some praline candies and some cider to take with us.

What a gorgeous town Beaufort is. I actually liked it better than Charleston. We found a place to stay in the heart of town and then drove around taking it all in. Lovely old trees with moss hanging from the branches, Palmetto palms, lovely old homes. Too hot to wander around on foot, we decided to take in a movie. We found a theater only a couple of blocks from our hotel and went to see Toy Story 3 which turned out to be a great Pixar film, every bit as good as the first two. Stepping out of the theater we were met by a horrendous thunderstorm. The lightening flashes were so close we didn't dare cross the parking lot to the car. When it finally let up for a minute I ran for the car getting soaked in the process and drove around to pick up Leslie.

The next day we drove downtown for breakfast at Blackstone's Cafe. The breakfast was fine. The decor was more interesting with a nod to the military and a nautical look with a collection of flags. After breakfast we walked a block over to the water and discovered a lovely walk along the water. Porch swings lined the walkway as did gardens, chairs and tables and a playground. We sat in one of the swings for over an hour and let the cool morning breeze blow over us while we watched a bridge open and close for boat traffic. It was a lovely way to spend some time outdoors before the noon day heat took over. We drove along the water front, past more beautiful old homes and moss laden trees on our way out of town towards Savannah, our final destination.

----------------------------

Next Stop--Savannah, Georgia and Paula Deen's The Lady and Sons.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

We've spent a few hours recently watching the Bellingham Bells baseball team. No, they aren't a professional team. This team is made up of a couple dozen scrappy young men who are barely out of high school. But they play with a lot of heart.

Best of all the price of admission can't be beat. Go ahead, pay $25 or $30 to get a ticket to see the Seattle Mariners. You can spend another bundle on food, too.

Or, you can spend no more than $7 for the best seats in the house at Joe Martin Stadium and get a whole hot dog meal, with chips and a drink for $6. Then there are the $2 Tuesday games where a ticket on the first or third base line, right behind the dugout is really only two bucks. Other nights food is offered at big discounts. Recently hot dogs, pop and ice cream was only a dollar.

Then there is the baseball. You get to see some very enthusiastic playing by a bunch of guys who are admittedly still learning the game, but we have seen lots of incredible plays made. Double plays, runners in pickles, terrific leaping catches on line drives and some pretty good pitching.

Enthusiastic, though rather small crowds attend. Lots of between inning action is provided by the young perky staffers who get kids involved in activities like running the bases, racing the chicken mascot across the outfield, and lots more. Foul balls are easily chased down by little ones out in the left field concourse where families can come with a picnic and the kids can run around or watch the game. Standing up to sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame at the 7th inning stretch is fun like it used to be.

The action is up close and the players very accessible for kids who want to collect autographs or just get a high five. Plenty of free parking instead of the $10-20 at Safeco and you can get in and out quickly. We're home in ten minutes.

You have got to get out and see these guys play. With only one more game to go in the season and then the playoffs, the season is about done. But they'll be back next year and so will we.

Asheville, North Carolina

The Smokey Mountains had given us a couple of days of relief from the heat. Descending into Asheville, the heat was a bit more evident but still not bad and I think that probably had some to do with the our enjoyment of that city. In what I guess I'd call the foothills of the Smokies, is a town that reminds me in some ways of Bellingham. It is a city of about 70 or 80 thousand, a university town and the arts are a big part of the community. What Asheville has done that I wish Bellingham had more of is a very vibrant downtown. Think downtown Bellingham only with every empty store front occupied and without the riff raff hanging out on the street corners. It's very lively with many great restaurants and art galleries, even an independent bookstore, though our Village Books beats their bookshop by a mile.

One of the stores was an old Woolworths that had been converted into a gallery for local artists including several whose work we really enjoyed. Along one wall a very clever entrepreneur had restored the old Woolworths lunch counter. Absolutely perfect in every detail, I was drawn immediately to it and even though we had just a had a wonderful lunch I had to sit at that counter. So we ordered a milk share to share and just took it all in and then continued wandering around town for a couple of hours.

The lunch I mentioned was at the Early Girl Eatery. Recommended in our Road Food guide, it was a cozy spot in the heart of a very lively downtown. We sat in a sunny spot near some windows looking out on a park and enjoyed our lunch of a meat and three. It was a nice, though not particularly memorable meal.

Leslie decided she'd like to go see something that evening, so she looked through some of the flyers we had picked up telling about upcoming events in town. She found an ad for a production of A Little Night Music at Mars Hill College. Billed as being a professional show, we had never seen a production of it before so we purchased tickets over the phone. That evening we drove over to the very picturesque college campus and found the theater. Unfortunately, the theater, a very old former church converted into the campus theater, wasn't air conditioned and with no windows to open and all the doors closed tight it became a sweat lodge very quickly. At intermission I easily convinced myself to stay outside in the much cooler air. The show was really not very well done anyway and when I discovered lightening bugs flying about the campus lawn, I had found my entertainment for the evening. After a while I walked back to the car, drove over to a store and got gassed up for the next day's drive. I got back to the theater just about in time to watch the doors flung open by the patrons almost as if the building had exploded from the pent up heat.

The next morning we left town on our way to Charleston, North Carolina. No, we didn't stop at the famed Biltmore Estate on the outskirts of town. It kind of came down to the cost. Not that we couldn't afford it. I don't know but we both agreed $55 just seemed totally ridiculous to spend on seeing this place so we passed and moved on to our next destination. Perhaps we will regret not having done it. You could argue that we will probably never be back so why not go. It just didn't seem to be that important.

On our way to Charleston our curiosity finally got the best of us and we decided to stop along the highway at one of the Waffle House restaurants that seem to be at just about every exit. Big mistake! Yeah, the waitstaff was very friendly and very efficient, but that is where the quality ends. The waffles are thin, pasty things. Cold and lifeless. The rest of the food, and it was plentiful, was just uninspired. We left scratching our heads over why such a chain continues to exist. There are hundreds of these little waffle shops along the freeways across the south. I suppose the location is their attraction. Easy off, easy on. But, for us anyway, fool me once. . .
_______________________

Next Stop--Charleston, NC--Gullah Food, and lunch at Bertha's

Day 8--Pigeon Forge and Gaitlenburg, TN

On our way through Smoky Mountains National Park we stopped off so Leslie could indulge one of her favorite pastimes--Spelunking! Not the, "get into a pair of heavy overalls, don a headlamp and heavy gloves and go exploring in pitch black, unexplored caverns type." She likes the ones where there is a guided tour, the formations of stalactites and stalagmites are lit up and the only pitch darkness is when the inevitable moment when tour guide tells everyone she is going to turn the lights off for just a moment so you can experience total darkness, which always gets a big reaction--little shrieks and people grabbing onto total strangers.

I don't mind the ones led by the National Park Service but some of the privately owned ones that don't seem to have the same standards of safety. . .oh, fine, so I'm chicken. I just don't need to think about being a hundred feet underground knowing that eventually that hundred feet of ground will fill the void I am standing in.

So Leslie took the tour of Tuckaleechee Caverns on her own. I tucked in for a nap and read my book while she went off on the hour and a half tour. She enjoyed it. She always does. She says she wants to be able to say she's been in a cave in every state or something like that. I think that's great!
_____________________
I suppose that once upon a time Pigeon Forge, Tennessee was a sleepy little vail tucked in amongst the Smoky Mountains with smoke wisping out of rustic little log cabin chimneys while skinny little ragamuffins with dirty faces and bare feet clung to their mother's apron strings and banjo and fiddle tunes played in the background somewhere.

At least that is what Dolly Parton, famed country singer and a native of that community would have you believe. But if it ever was a place with that description, it isn't anymore. Dolly hoped to bring jobs to her community and put on a display for the country charm that was her native home. She did that alright. Unfortunately, she also managed to pave over that paradise and turn it into a three-ringed circus.

We turned onto the main street of Pigeon Forge after a scenic drive through the beautiful Smoky Mountains and found ourselves driving down a divided four lane road in bumper to bumper traffic. "This ain't nothin'," said a merchant we spoke to. "You should see it on the weekend."

The street was lined with every imaginable tourist trap. Dolly Golf, Big Jim's Pancake House, Pigeon Forge Collectables (cheap t-shirts and bumper stickers), followed by another cheesy souvenir shop or a fun house or a sleazy family fun establishment or a. . .well, maybe you're getting the idea. Bottom line, don't go!

It took us an hour to get through Pigeon Forge and the five miles on to Gaitlenburg which turned out to be much like Pigeon Forge except it was only two lanes wide. That just made getting around even more difficult. The shops had classier fronts, but these more upscale facades only hid the same cheesy shops found back in Pigeon Forge.

We never-the-less stayed the night having made reservations ahead of time. Our hotel was inundated by Wee Little Miss competitors and their families. Dear God!

We managed to find a quiet surf and turf place to eat a block off the main road through town. It was fine but you'll note I don't mention the name. Just don't go to Gaitlenburg. Keep driving through to Asheville, North Carolina. It'll take another couple of hours to get their but trust me on this one.

The next morning we packed up early and headed towards Asheville. The early morning traffic was easy, a sign I suppose that everyone was still tucked into bed after a late night of fun in Gaitlenburg!
_________________

Next Up--Beautiful Asheville, North Carolina

Family History

Imagine, I'm sitting in a summer teacher workshop at Seattle Pacific University listening to the first hand story of an American veteran who piloted a P-47 "Thunderbolt" he called the Tallahassee Lassie, named for his wife. He proudly mentioned that he has been married to her now for 63 years. He commanded a squadron of these planes and before his career ended he was the commander of a squadron of B-52's. Colonel Ralph C. Jenkins related his story, in the quiet, halting voice that belied his many years.

He mentioned his service in the Strategic Air Command and flying B-52's and I began to sit up and pay closer attention. His service seemed to parallel that of my father-in-law's in many ways. That got me to thinking and as I listened to this man's incredible story with one ear, I began to do a little research on-line.

Google Chester J. Guelker and you get one hit. But that single site uncovered information about dad I had not seen before. The first faded black and white photo was familiar to me. We have a copy of it. But who are the other fellows in the photo. What's the name of the plane (air crews always gave their plane a name)? There it all was. The names of all the other fellows, the record of all their missions and a great story related by the pilot about one unforgettable mission they took.

Dad is the guy on the right.

Lt. Gerald F. Kane was the pilot on dad's plane and as captain he was entitled to name the plane which he did--Hurri-Kane. A scantily clad woman was painted across the nose of the plane along with the name. Standing in front of one photo was dad and the other two officers aboard the plane. Lt. Kane relates the story of one harrowing flight that especially stood out in his mind, a flight that dad was most surely aboard to experience as well.

A bit more digging and I stumbled across a photo of the great big band leader Glenn Miller who played his last concert at Thorpe Abbotts on December 14, 1944, two days after dad flew his very first mission out of Thorpe Abbotts. Miller flew out of Thorpe Abbotts and disappeared in bad weather over the English Channel.

Glenn Miller on the left at Thorpe Abbotts the day before he flew to his death over the English Channel and two days after dad's first combat mission over Germany.

Reading these two pages of history helped me zero in on certain facts that led me to more finds about dad. I discovered that the base he was stationed at is now a museum--Thorpe Abbotts about 90 miles north of London.

Knowing this fact allowed for a much broader search since there were a number of websites about Thorpe Abbotts. Suddenly dozens of old black and white photos taken of the base and life on base opened up. Life on a day to day basis was there to see and imagine what it was like for dad to walk from his barracks to the officers club to the tower, to the runway, to his plane for his next mission.

The Hurri-Kane was plane number 44-8680. I'm searching now for any info I can dig up about that specific plane and its fate following the war.

See a photo gallery of Thorpe Abbotts.

I have was even able to locate the address of dad's pilot, who at last check, was still alive and living in the small town in which he had spent his entire life, except those few years during the war. I have written a letter to his address, carefully asking for any help he might offer regarding his memories of dad. Carefully, I say, because I am not sure who will actually open this letter. It could be his widow or a son or daughter and I don't mean to offend or dredge up painful memories for whoever does receive the letter. I only seek information, memories of long ago that may already be lost to time or age or disease or worse.

Who knows where this investigation may lead me but I am intrigued. I want to know. I want to fill in more of the blanks that dad would never talk about for his own reasons until it was too late.

Our Big Boat Adventure!

I'm taking a break from the blogs about our southern road trip to talk about our recent cruise through the San Juan Islands in our boat.

For three days we lived on our boat, The Key of Sea, cruising the San Juan Islands, crabbing, living the boating life and surviving a few challenges along the way. The Key of Sea, our 32 foot Bayliner Motor Yacht has been ours for almost a year now, but for most of that time either we or it were unable to take advantage of the abundant cruising opportunities here in the northwest. The boat needed certain things done to it--a new dinghy, new electronics, we needed to take classes in order to better handle the boat and, of course, our jobs got in the way of being able to get out there or the weather made it impossible or uncomfortable. This week we finally took her out for an extended cruise--our first!

We left Bellingham's Squalicum Harbor early on a Wednesday morning headed for Orcas Island and a couple of special crab spots suggested by our boating guru, Rick. The water was flat calm and the currents drove us much of the way to our first destination. Our normal top speed at about 1700 RPM's is about 7 knots, but with the added help from the currents we were topping 9 knots. At one point I was able to lower the engine speed to 1500 RPM's and still get 9 knots, saving fuel.

We arrived at our first spot in East Sound, dropped in our two crab pots and found a nearby empty private buoy that we tied up to figuring no one would probably want it on a week day. We sat eating our lunch and taking in the gorgeous scenery around us while waiting for the crab pots to fill up. I had placed a pheasant breast, given to us by our friend Rick, in each pot. An hour and a half later we pulled up each of the pots. This turned out to be the hard part. We tried grabbing the pot as we drove past it but missed it several times until we got the hang of it. Then we stopped the boat and I pulled the pots up hand over hand until the cage began to appear from out of the depths. There in the cage were the tell-tale red shells of crabs crawling around inside. We were thrilled that we had actually caught some. Now what do we do?

There are very specific rules for what kind of crabs you can catch, the gender, the size and these rules must be followed pretty closely or the fines can be pricey. So I had to reach my hand into the pots and carefully grab each crab from the back of their shell, avoiding their snapping claws and those of their neighbors. Tricky! Then you have to attempt to get them out of the pot while they try to grab anything and hold on for dear life. This is tricky, too. Then you flip it over to check whether it is male or female, soft shell stage or hard shell (can't keep the soft shelled ones). Watch out for the claws! Then get out your measuring gauge and see if the crab is big enough to keep. Watch out for the claws! Of the pot of crabs I was able to keep only two. These are placed in an ice chest with fresh sea water which needs to be changed frequently in order to keep the crabs alive until you have enough to clean and cook.

After dropping our pots in two different locations I pulled up my last pot of the day and hit the jack pot. The pot seemed heavy on the way up and sure enough it was swarming with crabs--15 when I finally counted them. Of these I was able to keep nearly half. The female Dungeness had to go back. Any Dungeness males less than 6 1/4 inches across had to go back, but you can keep any Rock Crab that is greater than 5 inches across, male or female. Confused? It was difficult to keep it straight and I did wind up tossing back a couple that I later realized I could have kept. Still it was a nice haul for our first crab outing.

We headed for the Rosario Resort marina for the night. I called the resort on our VHF radio requesting information on moorage. My first use of the VHF radio went very smoothly. We picked out a mooring buoy and tied up to it easily. I dropped the dinghy and attached our 4 hp outboard to it for the short trip to the dock to pay our moorage fee. I had a dickens of a time getting the motor to start but it finally turned over and we motored in. The hard part is docking and getting out of these little dinghies without falling overboard. We managed but not before getting a bruise or cut trying to do so. After motoring back we tied up and settled aboard for the night.

We had planned to cook our crab and have some for dinner. I had brought along a portable propane burner to do the job since we had been told it was not a good idea to cook crab inside the boat in our galley. The smell is apparently terrible. But this is only a problem should your pot boil over. We couldn't get the base of the portable burner to fit on to the propane bottle. The bottle design had changed since the last time I bought one and so we had no way of cooking the crab. So we made the decision to cook them inside anyway. We watched the pot carefully to make sure it didn't boil over. After the water came to a boil we tossed in the crab (legs and claws only) and waited for the water to return to a boil. Interestingly, we had been told to cook the crab in seawater. So we had pulled a bucket of water right out of the sound and poured it into our boiling pot. 10 minutes after the water returned to a boil we turned off the heat and poured the water and crab through a strainer in one sink. After the all the water had drained through we dumped the crab in to the other sink which I had filled with ice water to stop any further cooking. In minutes we had crab ready to eat.

We sat down to a dinner of salmon chowder and fresh crab while watching eagles soar outside our windows, sea lions frolic and the clouds roll by. We watched the sun go down and by 9:30 we were exhausted and ready for bed. But the open water mooring allowed water to noisily lap at the sides of the boat all night giving us a bit of a fitful sleep.

Next morning we decided to head for Friday Harbor, to the quieter moorage of the inner harbor. We called the harbor master on the VHF as we arrived and were given a slip assignment. The harbor was crazy with boat traffic. We had to get in line to move toward our slip assignment. I was a nervous wreck until our boat was finally, safely tied up.
The harbor was beautiful. We headed up the dock to check in, pay our fees, head off to lunch and check out the town. We ate at a spot that overlooked the harbor. The ferries and colorful boats of all sizes came and went right in front of us. We walked on into town and stopped in at interesting shops along the way, bought a new pitcher that attracted Leslie's attention and I found a new base for our portable propane stove for cooking crabs. Only two bucks!

Back at the boat we spent the evening quietly reading, watching the sun set and playing games at the salon table before finally heading off to bed and a much quieter night's sleep. Friday morning dawned bright and beautiful across the marina. Boats quietly slipped out and headed for the four winds. We joined them about 9 am and headed towards home. The currents were favorable and we were able to dodge the couple of ferries that were coming and going around us.

About three hours later we arrived in Chuckanut Bay where we intended to drop our crab pots one more time before heading home. We dropped the first pot over the side in Pleasant Cove, a small little bay at the south end of Chuckanut bay in about 45 feet of water. However, when the second pot went over we immediately had trouble. The leaded line that is supposed to drop to the bottom along with the crab pot, got sucked into the starboard prop and wound itself up.

We quickly shut down the engines and began looking at solutions to our problem. The port engine seemed to still be operational so we decided to limp back to port on that one. As we began to go Leslie hollered from the stern that she could see the rope. I stopped forward movement. Obviously we were dragging the crab pot behind us. We grabbed the boat hook and extended it out as far as possible. A couple of tries and I had the line. Carefully pulling it up we grabbed the line and pulled up the crab pot we thought we had lost. We tied of the remaining line to a cleat on the stern.

Again we headed towards home. But kept our heads together thinking and it came to us that we could give our diesel mechanic to ask if there was anything we should or shouldn't be doing. A quick call into Travis and he suggested we try putting the starboard engine in reverse. Sometimes it reverses the tangled line and it drops away. We tried it to no avail. On we went limping home on the one engine.

Another thought came to us. Call our diver who had recently changed out our zincs. He answered the phone and also happened to be out on the bay working on a buoy. He'd meet us in about an hour. We limped on in to Fairhaven Harbor and tied up to a public dock after a struggle to do so on a single engine. Top to Bottom divers came riding up like the cavalry, a very welcome site. In five minutes I was holding the remnants of the line and the red and white buoy that had fouled our engine. The engine fired up beautifully. The diver, also a diesel mechanic, thought that everything looked fine and that no damage was done. Whew!

We went on our merry way home stopping only to empty our holding tank and then with a bit of a struggle managed to dock in our home slip. It was an exhausting final day. We were tired, nervous wrecks and wanted nothing more than to call it a day.

While the trip was generally a success and we had lots of fun, we also learned a lot from the mistakes we made. Make sure the boat is stopped before lowering crab pots. Lower them only a bit into the water to make sure all forward or reverse momentum has ceased, then lower the pot straight down without letting any of the line linger at the surface. Carefully move away from the buoy being sure it stays away from the prop area!

Day 7--Nashville and the Grand Ole Opry

We arrived for a two day visit to Nashville in time to wander down Broadway where the street is mostly made up of honky tonks. Music blared out of every other door in a part of town where for some talented and lucky country music artists dream's can come true. Here is where, at least historically, many country music and blue grass groups were discovered and or paid their dues. Walk into any of these honky tonks and for the price of a beer you can sit and listen to music from 10 in the morning until the wee hours. Toss in a few bucks in the tip jar and you might help a starving artist pay his or her rent and get a free CD of their music to boot.

We had purchased tickets for An Evening with Vince Gill and Friends at the Ryman Auditorium. This was to be the highlight of our entire trip for me. As a kid I remember my Gramma Willie, a true Okie right out of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, tuning into the Grand Ole Opry radio broadcasts. I thought at the time the music was kind of weird, but as I grew up and discovered and better understood the legacy of these my grandmother's people and what they had gone through in their lives, I gained a genuine respect them. Today my Okie heritage is a deep part of who I am and I treasure the gift of that heritage from my grandparents. And so it was for me a very emotional journey to walk through the doors of the old, original home of the Grand Ole Opry--The Ryman Auditorium.

The interior looked appropriately like a church with hard wooden pews and stained glass windows all looking toward the pulpit. Only the pulpit at the Ryman is a stage and for generations of country music fans, this was mecca. My grandparents never had the means or opportunity to travel to the Ryman and so this was in effect a way to further honor my grandparents for the hard lives they suffered through to give me opportunities they never had.

We took our seats, chatted with those around us, some of whom were also there for the first time. We looked around in awe of our surroundings. Then the lights dimmed and out walked Vince Gill and seven other musicians. I didn't recognize any of them except Vince Gill who is a very famous country and blue grass musician and composer (he is also know for being married to Christian pop singer Amy Grant). Then I noticed one of the guitar players and knew immediately who he was. It was Dan Tyminski, the husband of country singer Allison Krauss and part of her band Allison Krauss and Union Station. Dan would be most familiar to most of us for his rendition of Man of Constant Sorrow which George Clooney lip-synced in the film Oh Brother, Where Art Though?

I was in heaven! These world class musicians played blue grass for two solid hours and the audience loved it. Towards the end, the group played a few of Vince Gills newer compositions which were very touching, from the heart songs. The gentleman next to me was wiping away tears. Leslie and I looked at each other and we were both in tears as well. It was just so sincere and so genuine. I felt like Gill was just the kind of guy that would be a terrific friend. One of the last pieces was an old time hymn neither of us recognized. Vince sang it and at the end stopping playing and whispered into the microphone, "Ya'll sing along now." We didn't know the words but apparently most folks did. We listened quietly as the entire auditorium solemnly sang along. As the final notes faded, the auditorium sighed. We just sat there with tears running down our faces. What an incredible moment. I made it to the Opry for my Gramma Willie and I will never forget precious time spent there to honor her legacy.

Sadly, the new site of the Grand Ole Opry is out on the edge of town and has become a resort complete with hotel and shopping mall. Another victim of its own success. The recent floods in the south left the new facility under water and we couldn't even visit since it was being repaired for the next 3 months. Ironically, the old Ryman Auditorium was called back to duty while the new Opry house is being repaired The Grand Ole Opry will again be broadcast from the dear old Ryman.

While in Nashville we also visited The Hermitage, home of President Andrew Jackson. It was set on some lovely acreage just on the edge of town and the walking tour around the grounds included his manse and several out buildings, originally slave quarters. The original fields and gardens are mostly surviving in tact. His grave and that of his wife are also on the grounds.

One of our best meals on the trip was at Arnold's Country Kitchen. This James Beard award winning spot is a perfect example of not judging anything by its cover, because through the rustic building front waits an incredible meal.

Arnold's is cafeteria style so there is a line as you walk in, but it moves right along as the dining room turns over quickly. Along the wall are not one but two framed James Beard award medals suggesting what is to come. Order a meat and three sides! I got smothered country fried steak cooked so that it just fell apart and topped with a beefy onion gravy. My sides included fried green tomatoes, corn bread and collard greens. Arnold's is also known for its pie so we had to try some of that. I selected the richest, chocolatiest chocolate cream pie I have ever eaten.

Leslie decided to just get some sides and no meat. She selected the corn bread, mac and cheese, fried green tomatoes (on the right), creamed corn and green beans. She also grabbed a slice of chess pie (pictured left). All yummy!


Next Stop--Pigeon Forge, Gaitlenburg and The Great Smoky Mountains, Tennessee