Nashville Sights & Sounds – Country Music Hall of Fame, Grand Ole Opry & Opryland Hotel

This post represents another installment in The Big Switcheroo series – tales from last spring’s epic journey from the northeast to the Florida Keys and back – involving family, friends and an extraordinary range of adventures.  You may want to grab your favorite beverage at this point and settle in for a time.  I realize this is a long post, but I didn't want to split up our Nashville visit into too many posts.  We still have a lot of miles to cover on this trip!

Alan’s and my most recent memories of Nashville date back approximately 23 years to when our son Ryan was just two years old, and our daughter wasn’t even a twinkle in anyone’s eye.  During that visit to Music City, we were traveling with my Mom and her niece, my cousin, Annie.  At the time, the Opryland theme park was still in existence, our visit to Nashville coincided with the holiday season, and we enjoyed a wonderful (but brisk) walk through Opryland to take in the lights and shows.  Unfortunately, we happened to be there during a cold snap, and I can still recall the wicked temperature of 17 degrees on the evening of our excursion through Opryland.  (It was not a problem that a large mug of hot chocolate and the pleasure of being with family couldn’t fix.)  On that trip, our budget allowed for one night at the Opryland Hotel and, rather than drag Ryan’s camper crib in for just a single night, Alan and I decided that we’d let him sleep in the bed with us.  Big mistake.  We discovered that our two year old traveled about 4.5 miles in his sleep at night, and Alan and I woke a number of times with Ryan’s various body parts in our faces or poking us in the back or belly.  Lesson learned.  Never again.

A Musical Journey - from Dean Martin to George Strait

This isn’t exactly another installment in The Big Switcheroo series – tales from last spring’s epic journey from the northeast to the Florida Keys and back - but, rather, a prelude to an upcoming post about our experiences at the Grand Ole Opry and Country Music Hall of Fame.  I thought a little background about my journey through music might first be in order.

My parents married a bit later in life than was customary for their generation and I have one sibling, my brother Michael, who is 10 years older than I am.  Considering the age spread among the four of us, it’s not surprising that our family’s musical interests spanned a lot of decades.

Our Spring Travel Plans Went Right Out the Window

I feel awful.  Right after I posted a reminder to sign up for email delivery of new blog posts from Reflections Around the Campfire, I read that several other blogs were having problems with their Feedburner email subscriptions.  If you recently signed up for email delivery and are having any issues receiving new posts, please try unsubscribing and/or signing up again.  I do apologize for any trouble you are having.  That being said, my last post was published on January 30th, so if you haven’t received any new notices since then, it’s me, not you.  Life has been a bit hectic around here lately . . .

Around this time last year, Alan and I took a look at our camping map of the United States.  When the kids were young, we had printed off a basic map and started coloring in the states in which we had camped with colored pencils.  It’s not fancy and it’s not the type we would put up on the travel trailer; it’s just a simple map on cardstock that lives in one of our travel binders.  A good look at our camping map made it obvious that we really needed to make a concerted effort to visit some of our southern states, so we decided to make a loop through that area of the country, focusing mainly on the states between Florida and Texas.  Then I started planning our itinerary.