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(Note: This blog entry represents a combination of writings and pictures already posted about our Cool Change II, Land Yacht Adventures 2021 through Cindy via Facebook and Rick via email. So for some of you, the following posts may be duplicative, but for others, this is the first time you are seeing them. We are repeating them here to centralize the record and share our experiences more broadly.)
CINDY’S POST:
Five states, 350 miles in one day! After spending an absolutely unforgettable time near St. Louis, Missouri with my niece Laurie, her husband Ted and one of their sons Nicholas in their gorgeous home, and visiting the St. Louis sights, we drove back into Illinois from Missouri, then detoured slightly into Indiana to say we had been there, and then through Kentucky to Tennessee, where we stayed in a small, private RV Park in Nashville. The next day we planned a commercial sightseeing tour of Nashville in a golf cart (open air) to help us understand where we might want to go in Nashville. I had never been there before. It was so lush and green and full of trees, and the terrain was rolling instead of Midwest flat. We had definitely entered a new region of the country.
We were social distancing, wearing masks, avoiding crowds, and even skipping the Grand Ole Opry, even though there were a few seats left for the night, due to Covid. Wah! But hopefully we would still get to experience a bit of the flavor of Music City. The first night at our RV Park, an outstanding young country singer played live out on the back deck of the office. Anywhere else and she would have had her own show at a nightclub, at a minimum. We were looking forward to more discovery tomorrow …
I expected to have to wait until dark to get a flavor of the music of Music City, but not so. Our morning “golf cart” tour of downtown Nashville took us to Bicentenial Park, the Cumberland River waterfront, up the music venue row called Broadway, near the State Capital buildings, by the Nashville Farmers Market (reminded me of an indigenous market in a large Mexican city, with lots of open-air food vendors on several floors, local crafts for sale, etc.), Skull’s Rainbow Room (a brothel, speakeasy and gambling hall back in the day), and many other iconic places. Afterwards, we ate at The Stillery on Second Avenue and had the signature Nashville dish of macaroni and cheese topped with “hot chicken” (as in, spicy). Then we strolled up Broadway with thousands of other visitors, alternating between being serenaded as we passed by one bar to being musically assaulted as we passed by the next. So much music! And it was only early afternoon! We walked by the famous honky tonks of Jason Aldean’s, Kid Rock’s, Tootsie’s and Nudie’s Honky Tonk. Oh to be younger when the louder the music, the better; when just the thought of a single drink on a hot afternoon didn’t make us want to fall asleep; and in a Covid-free world where the more crowded the bar, the better.
The Cumberland River at the foot of Broadway, Nashville 
Kid Rock honky tonk: four floors of loud live music and no masks 
Johnny Cash is very big in Nashville 
“Hot Chicken” Mac and Cheese 
The iconic “Nudies” honky tonk
Since no one was socially distancing, no one was wearing masks, and it was Tennessee summer hot, we decided we had had our fill of Nashville and we headed back to our RV park on an inexpensive shuttle. I am glad I saw it but Covid really took the fun out of the experience for us, although that didn’t seem to stop any other of the multitude of tourists on the streets. Maybe that had something to do with the fact that there was a NASCAR race going on in Nashville that weekend. I wonder if NASCAR draws a similar crowd to Sturgis? Anyway, very cool place to visit, but I am glad we left when we did. Onward to my cousin Jil’s near Knoxville, Tennessee.
RICK’S POST:
We had been contemplating whether or not we would be able to squeeze in a 300 mile detour south into Tennessee to visit Cindy’s cousin Jill and her husband Don. They live near the town of Lenoir, Tennessee. After seeing them, we would be heading back north again to see our nephew Dan and his wife Stephanie, and three daughters, who live in Buffalo, NY. As it turned out, Dan and Stephanie would be in Ohio for a family reunion during the next week so we had the time to spare before heading their way. We also reasoned that we could make a visit to Nashville along the way, a place I had never been to. We were going to have to be extra cautious in Nashville because we had been hearing news reports at that time that they were having a high rate of Covid infections.
There were not many camping options available at the time we were going to be in Nashville, but we were able to book two nights at a commercial campground near the city that had a shuttle bus stop for visitors wanting to go downtown.
We arrived early in the evening, with a bit of daylight left as we got parked and set up. The campground was typical of private camp grounds in that they had crammed as many sites as possible onto the small property. The individual spaces were only separated by a few feet and as such there is really no sense of privacy. For us, public parks run by the federal, state, county and city government were always a better choice if available.
As we were setting up, we could hear music that was loud, though not annoyingly so. At first I thought it was coming from one of our neighbor’s trailers, but then I noticed that across the road from us, where the office and swimming pool were, there was also a patio area and that this was where the music was coming from. I noticed that our neighbors to the left had set out chairs in front of their trailer and that they were sitting there listening to the music, which by then I could tell was a live performer.
Our set up completed, we put our own chairs out, opened a bottle of wine and proceeded to enjoy the show. I was surprised how good it sounded, being not only outside but at a distance from us. It was a solo female singer and she was very talented. She played an acoustic guitar and sang covers of country songs as well as some original material. After a time we decided to go and join the small crowd that was on the patio and listen to her there.
We found out that she was only 17 years old and was a regular feature performer at the campground. Her father was running the audio mixer and doing very well at it. We reflected on the idea that in many places throughout the country, she could very well have been a main act in some nice venues, as she was that good. But being in Nashville, a place where so many musicians go to be discovered, she was up against some very heavy competition.
The next day we rode the shuttle bus downtown and got dropped off at a company called Joyride, where we took a 90 min golf cart tour of the city. It was a fun way to get an overview of the town. We drove down the main strip featuring all the honky tonk bars, visited the statehouse grounds, and stopped at the former site of the Marathon auto works that produced about 200 autos a year between 1911 and 1914. Ultimately they ran into financial distress as they could not compete against the assembly line process that Henry Ford Invented in 1913. The building now houses a few stores & restaurants but also has a museum with several Marathon autos on display.
After our tour we went walking, and our first stop was at a little place our tour driver recommended for their signature Nashville dish of Mac & cheese topped with spicy hot chicken. The place was packed and we waited for about 45 min to get a table but it was worth it. When you order the dish you can specify the heat level from mildly spicy to hot as hades.
After lunch we strolled down Broadway and sampled the music coming out of the many bars and restaurants. As we seemed to be the only ones wearing masks, we did not feel comfortable going inside and sitting down in these places but it was fun just walking by them and listening to all the music. Every band we heard was good, I guess as was to be expected in Nashville.
There was a man that kept driving up and down the strip on his Harley Davidson wearing a demon mask. He continued for the whole time we were downtown. We saw several different rolling party attractions, from converted school busses to flatbed trailers being pulled by a tractor. There are also pedal powered trolleys, where the patrons sit at a bar and pedal while a guide steers the contraption throughout the streets. The people on these rolling party venues were rocking out to loud music and most were arguably if not obviously very intoxicated! It seemed like an odd choice of activity for a hot afternoon in Nashville, but there they were!
I read a news article later describing the problems they have had with the rolling parties and the city’s efforts to bring some regulation to the companies that operate them. There have been a number of injuries resulting from people falling off of these things, which would not be hard to do even if sober. One man got off of one of the pedal bars and was so intoxicated that he ran head on into the side of a moving car that was passing by. Another person was run over by the rear wheels of the open air party bus he fell off of. Sound like fun?
We were pretty exhausted after a few hours of Nashville so we found our shuttle bus and went back to the campground. We were toying with the idea of going back in to one of the famous Nashville restaurants for dinner but we could not get up the energy to venture out once again.
It was a bit disturbing seeing such huge crowds of people partying and being in such close proximity, literally shoulder to shoulder at most of the music venues. In addition to the regular crowds, there was over 100,000 people in town attending the Grand Prix race that was happening that weekend.
We heard a couple weeks later that Nashville was in the midst of a major Covid crisis and had the highest rate of infections in the nation. Hospital critical care facilities were at maximum capacity, resulting in hospitals being forced to ration care and seek out of state facilities to keep up with the demand. I think we made the right choice to skip going back to town for dinner and to leave when we did.
The next morning found us heading out on our way to Lenoir City in Tennessee, nearby Cindy’s cousin Jill’s house. We had reservations at Melton Hill Campground, a park that is run by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). I looked it up, and found the TVA was created in 1933 to provide flood & erosion control, and also to create electricity by construction of dams and reservoirs. The park we would be staying in was on the site of a reservoir and hydroelectric dam facility. When we made our reservation, the park was booked except for one space, which they told us would accommodate our 30 foot trailer.
When we arrived and saw it, I wondered what they had been thinking. The space was shaped in a semi circle and it was way too tight a turn to be able to park in it, not to mention that it was sloped. One of the campground hosts came by and told us we should try facing the other direction. The only way to do that though would be to travel the one way loop of the campground in the wrong direction. So we pulled out of the space and went to a big parking lot at the end of the loop. The camp host met us there and drove ahead of us to block any traffic while we were moving in the wrong direction.
By coming into the space from the opposite direction, we were able to just barely fit but the ground was far from level and it would be an uncomfortable site. We got the trailer as close to level as possible in the space that was obviously meant for a trailer no longer than 20 feet.
While we were setting up, the campground manager came by in one of the golf carts the hosts and workers use to get around. He started chatting with Cindy and when he noticed our California license plates he said… “Oh, you all are from that other country on the left coast that thinks they are a part of America.” Never mind that California has a population and tax base eight times as large as Tennessee… He then proudly proclaimed that he was a “bible guy” and that he had recently started re-reading the bible in ancient Greek. Yea, good luck with that, fella!
The park was nicely maintained and had some nice paths along the water that is Melton Hill Reservoir. At the bottom of the dam is the Clinch River. Fortunately, we were able to move the next day to a larger and level, paved way site designated as “handicapped” that had plenty of room for both trailer and truck.
Our new camping site
Later in the day, Cindy’s cousin Jill and her husband Don came to visit. Cindy had not seen her cousin in many years and I had never met them, so we spent a couple of hours that day catching up and sharing the stories of our lives.
Jill and Don made the decision to relocate from Illinois to Tennessee when Don had a job offer in the area after a lay off. They moved into a housing development close to Lenoir City. They were drawn to the area because of its beauty and because housing and other costs of living were very affordable. Nearby their home was the Kingston coal-fired power plant run by the TVA. In December of 2008, an unlined retention pond for coal ash slurry burst, releasing more than a billion gallons of slurry that destroyed the neighborhood where Jill and Don had moved. The damage was so severe and the land so contaminated that the TVA had to buy all the residents out of their properties. It was the worst industrial accident of its kind in US history and eventually cost over a billion dollars to repair the environmental damage it had caused.
Though they were devastated at their loss, Don and Jill felt that they received a fair settlement for their home and possessions. Soon they had purchased a beautiful new home on some acreage that backed up to a forest. The home was larger than the home they lost and they loved the beautiful new area they had moved to.
Then something strange started happening. They had a porch rail that was severely damaged by some type of animal. They replaced the damaged wood but kept finding more damaged areas. They could not keep up with repairing the damage that was being caused to their home by the creatures they were sharing the land with. It got so bad that finally they decided they had no alternative than to sell their beautiful home in the country and go somewhere new.
They ended up buying a much smaller place in a new urban housing development. This actually turned out to be a better alternative for them. Besides not continuing to be literally eaten out of house and home, they do not have much property maintenance to deal with in their golden years. Also, the smaller home for just the two of them feels like it is sized right. The area has lots of new homes still under construction. The residents share green spaces and they even have their own small boat marina.
Don & Jill had invited us over that night for a delicious homemade southern style chicken dinner made by Jill. Following the dinner, they took us for a drive through their neighborhood and showed us some of its highlights, which they were obviously very proud to be a part of.
The next day we began our journey back north to Buffalo, New York for our visit with our Nephew Dan, & family. The plan was to spend a couple of days visiting with them before heading to the home of my sister Chrysoula and her family in Gilford New Hampshire.