By Shelby
This was a busy week for us. We were in 4 states: Mississippi, Tennessee (our last state), Georgia, and North Carolina. We started off the week in Olive Branch, Mississippi, which is 30 minutes from Memphis, Tennessee. Monday through Wednesday, we worked from the public library in Olive Branch. It was pretty nice. We never had an issue getting a table with power.
After work Tuesday, we went into Memphis. We parked downtown and went for a short walk down to the Mississippi River. This would be our last time on the Mississippi River on this trip. We had crossed it in Minneapolis, St Louis, New Orleans, and Memphis.
After checking out the river and the Memphis skyline, we headed to Beale Street, which calls itself the Home of the Blues and the birthplace of Rock ‘n Roll. It’s a big tourist area, as well. It was still light out when we got dinner at the Blues City Cafe. I got BBQ ribs and fried catfish. I’d wanted to try catfish for a long time, but hadn’t gotten a chance until then. It was pretty good, but the ribs were better. Memphis is known for its BBQ. Spencer also got the ribs. After we ate, we checked out the live music that was starting, but didn’t stick around for long.
We walked down the rest of the street. It was only a couple blocks long and it was pedestrian-only which was nice. The restaurants and clubs all had bright neon signs lit up now that it was getting dark. It looked very vintage. We got a kick out of the fact that we were “walking in Memphis”, like the song.
We went to B.B. King’s Blues Club, which had live blues music. Unfortunately, it had a cover charge, which seemed to be a thing in the area. We got a couple drinks and found seats at the bar. It was surprisingly busy for a Tuesday night. The live music played by the house band was good. They had trumpet and saxophone players, which was cool. I didn’t recognize much of the music, but it was still good. We stayed for a couple hours before returning to the car and driving back to the Planet Fitness in Mississippi for the night.
Wednesday after work, we left the Memphis area and drove an hour to Jackson, Tennessee toward Nashville. We were getting a head start on the 3 hour drive from Memphis to Nashville. Before leaving Memphis, we stopped to do some quick grocery shopping at Kroger. The next morning we drove the last 2 hours to the city. The highway seemed to be a very popular trucking route. There were more trucks than normal cars.
Nashville seemed like a fun city. We found free parking across the Cumberland River, which flowed through the city. We saw the city skyline from Cumberland Park. This was right next to Nissan Stadium, home of the Tennessee Titans. Then we crossed a pedestrian bridge into the downtown area. It was all very clean.
Broadway was Nashville’s famous tourist street. We could hear country music blasting from a block away. Before checking out the street, we stopped at the Walk of Fame Park, which had tiles on the sidewalk with the names of famous country singers. I recognized quite a few. Then we moved on to Broadway. We stopped to watch a tractor pull a trailer full of tourists down the street. It looked like Nashville went all-out on its country theme.
Broadway was crazy busy. There was barely any room to walk on the sidewalk because of all the people. It was much busier than I had expected, especially on a Thursday. Every restaurant/bar we walked by had a band or multiple bands playing. Tons of people were wearing cowboy boots and country outfits. Party bikes were constantly riding by carrying drunk tourists. There were stores selling rows and rows of cowboy boots. The whole area was very lively. We stopped in a candy shop to get a free sample of pralines. I liked Nashville better than Memphis.
We went to Robert’s Western World for lunch and music. They had a Recession special I had wanted to try. It included a fried bologna sandwich, a moon pie, and a PBR all for $6. Unfortunately, their stove was broken so we couldn’t get food there. We ended up going to Ole Red, a restaurant owned by Blake Shelton for lunch instead. The live band playing was pretty good.
After lunch, we finished walking up the street before returning to the car. We left Nashville and drove an hour south to Tullahoma. We went to a drive-in movie theater that night to see the new Super Mario movie. Unfortunately, the fried dough we got made us sick and it was a pretty miserable night after the movie.
Friday morning, we were feeling better, so we decided to go ahead with the 3 hour drive to the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, Georgia. We had wanted to go there when we were in Georgia previously, but it was a long drive from the coast where we were at the time. Along the way to the aquarium, we stopped at Lookout Mountain, where there is a small area run by the National Park Service. From the mountain peak, you can supposedly see 7 states. After checking out the view, we moved on to the aquarium.
We had a great time at the aquarium. When we got there, it was very busy. In small areas, we could barely move because of all the people. It started emptying out as it got later in the day. We saw all sorts of fish and other sea creatures, including a whale shark, manta rays, a sea turtle, and much more.
We went to a sea lion show and a dolphin show. It was pretty amazing to see how well the animals could be trained. We sat in the splash zone during the dolphin show and got pretty wet. After we finished with the aquarium, we drove to a Planet Fitness about an hour outside of Atlanta toward the Smoky Mountains.
Saturday morning, we drove the remaining two hours to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It was very crowded. We stopped to do a 2 mile hike up to an observation tower on the highest peak in the park. Unfortunately, at the top it was all cloudy and we couldn’t really see the view. The trail up was very scenic, though. The clouds in the mountains looked really nice. When we got back to the parking lot, the clouds had cleared enough to see some of the surrounding mountains.
After the hike, we continued on to our campsite at Elkmont Campground. We had been lucky enough to get one of the last available sites in the park. The sites were pretty crowded and close together, but it was on a nice creek. The sound was relaxing. We spent a couple hours relaxing. Spencer put up the hammock in a couple of trees. When the temperature started dropping, I lit our portable campfire candle. It was a little goofy looking, like an oversized candle, but it was warm.
When we started getting hungry, we started an actual campfire. We cooked hot dogs over the fire. For dessert, we had s’mores and a banana cream pie that Spencer had made earlier that day. It was all good. That night, it started pouring rain. Our tent held up for the most part and we stayed dry.
Sunday, we drove 3 hours along the Blue Ridge Parkway from Cherokee, near the national park, to Asheville, North Carolina. The scenic road followed along a ridge through the Appalachian Mountains. It was beautiful. We stopped at a few overlooks before driving down to Planet Fitness in Asheville. We plan on working from Asheville next week before continuing our drive north.
Fun Facts from Week 51:
- Memphis is named after the ancient Egyptian city of the same name. Egyptian Memphis was on the Nile and modern Memphis is on the Mississippi.
- Nashville is known as the bachelorette party capital of the world.
- The Georgia Aquarium holds over 10 million gallons of water, making it the largest aquarium in the U.S.
