Not too much to write about a 1,200 mile cross-country weekend road trip. When you gotta get the miles in, there ain’t too much stopping and exploring going on. After leaving Colorado Springs, Kansas was our first milestone. Which brought on the inevitable references to “You’re not in Kansas now, Toto” even though we blatantly were. I scanned the horizon regularly for tornadoes ready to whisk us away into another world. Nothing doing. No need for red shoes.
Laser-focused, we continued racking up the states, and spent the night at an alleged brewery/winery ‘harvest host’ in Missouri. When you ask for a beer and they offer you something from California (when they’re supposed to have their own-brewed beer and we’re 1,800 miles from California) that’s not so good. Still, a very scenic place to spend the night and beats a Walmart hands down.
Onwards we progressed through a corner of Kentucky. Bit bummed we didn’t get an opportunity to stop here. Three things that spring to mind with Kentucky: 1. Kentucky Fried Chicken (no shortage of KFCs along the freeway and no doubt way better chicken further from the beaten track); 2. horse racing (closest we got was seeing signs for horse racing stadiums), and most importantly 3. Bourbon. How we missed out on doing the Bourbon trail I have no idea. One for the ‘still to do’ list.
And finally, after Colorado, Kansas, Missouri and Kentucky, we made it to Tennessee. Home of country music, Dolly Parton, Elvis Presley and bbq. (Or maybe it’s Texas for bbq. Dang it, they do pretty good bbq here too, y’all). For us at least, Tennessee was mostly about the food, drink and vibe.
Nashville, Tennessee
Hot chicken is the local specialty dish of Nashville. What’s so hot about it? It’s a crunchy chickeny flavor bomb, doused in a cayenne spice mix and deep fried. No doubt the stuff heart attacks are made of and beaten only by dry-rub fall-off-the-bone unctuous ribs and tangy baked bbq beans that we indulged in at Peg Leg Porker.
The drinking establishment options also had a southern twang, with Yee Haw Brewing and Ole Smoky Distillery. I have to say after trying Apple Pie flavored moonshine at one extreme to Blue Flame at the other (with all sorts of nastiness in between), I am not a moonshine convert.
Bit low on hiking options in central Nashville but we did roam around Fort Negley, where the remains of a fort from the American Civil War stood languishing on an overgrown hillock, looking down protectively over Nashville. So overgrown that they had to bring in the Chew Crew. Local herd of sheep reporting for duty!
Looks more like Yorkshire than Tennessee.
Busy chewing though.
Certainly unique and eclectic was the co-working office, InDo. Not quite downtown Nashville, we were located in an industrial/arty/grungy area, dotted with its share of breweries. A good option for late evenings.
The beer flight is good blogging inspiration.
They take their music theming seriously at the co-working office – shiny black vinyl records (remember them!), glitzy silver CDs (even they’re old hat now) and country music album covers form the decor back-drop, interspersed with hand-drawn portraits and sketches. Of famous music people of course.
Oh, and then there’s the toilets in the office:
Knoxville, Tennessee
A week in Nashville, followed by a week in Knoxville.
Who would have thought the highlight of Knoxville would be a multi-story car park? And by that I don’t mean that Knoxville didn’t have much going for it. Just that the car park was awesome. If Carlsberg did penthouse suites in car parks, this would be it.
In short, campsites are a bit hard to come by in the middle of the city, and the standard inner city car park they use to house RVs overnight was full. And so we got our own private rooftop mansion, snuggled in the corner with awesome views of downtown Knoxville.
No room at the inn for a teeny tiny BaseCamp.
No social distancing problems here.
Most nights we finished work at 9pm, now a whole three hours on from pacific time. With balmy nights and views of the city skyline (not forgetting the bus station), our post-work wind down spot was perfect.
Fickle as we are about the weather, the morning fog we experienced consecutively for three days was not conducive to getting out there doing stuff before work (to be fair, neither were the late night rooftop bar sessions).
Happy Friday, fog-free and so it’s time to play day. Ijams nature reserve gets bonus points for being only a few miles out from downtown Knoxville yet feels like a peaceful haven, with a carpet of fallen leaves underfoot reminding us of the season.
If you want to experience Knoxville at night (other than hang out in a car park), what do you do? Go to the speakeasy of course! In true speakeasy style, The Peter Kern Library was a touch hard to find. And had that speakeasy essence of over-inflated self-importance. The cocktails however… pretty damn good.
Other establishments visited included the Knox Whiskey Works distillery and the highly rated Hi-Wire brewery. No pressure but we got to Hi-Wire at 9:20pm and last orders were at 9:30pm. Never mind, after downing a couple of swift ones, very nice they were too, we took some cans to go and it was back to our home from home we went. Private rooftop bar for a nightcap, don’t mind if I do. Bring on the buses.
