Day 12 – April 15

Stone Mountain Park did not have a lot of redeeming value, other than a noticeable lack of roaming bands of marauding bike gangs and as it was raining when we awoke we decided to hit the road as soon as possible and to drive on the inter state for a while. The low clouds would have made driving in the mountains pointless. So our plan was to get further south paralleling the Blue Ridge Parkway and then get back on the parkway to visit the Blue Ridge Folk Art centre. I say ‘our’ plan euphemistically because if I had been the sole decision maker I wouldn’t go to the trouble to roll down my window to get a better look at a piece of ‘folk art’ which, as elitist as it may sound, in my mind is one of the great oxymorons of our time.

Don’t misunderstand, I really appreciate the outlet that their art gave to Maud Lewis and Joe Norris and the innocence of that work but when I see some trade school drop out painting three headed cats on pieces of old barn board in an attempt to ride on Grandma Moses’ shirt tails it falls apart for me and don’t even get me going on painted tractor seats. That being said you aren’t reading this for some rant on art appreciation, I’m just setting the stage here.

So we roll into the parking lot and with some reluctance in my step I approached a very attractive stone building, thinking what a waste of a great building. However once I stepped inside and saw a demonstration of wood turning going on I began to think that this stop might be salvageable. As it turns out this is really a ‘craft’ museum/store. There were some amazing examples of wood work, pottery, jewellery, quilting and various other crafts, most of which was for sale but some on permanent display. This is a juried guild whose membership consists of Appalachian residents only and the work was of incredible quality.

We spent a couple of hours there admiring the work and talking to the very knowledgeable staff, some of whom were artisans. So a very interesting stop and despite many temptations our only purchase was a small hand blown Christmas ornament.

We exited the Parkway again and took the interstate to Asheville, N.C. Where we arrived around 4:00. Asheville isn’t a big city but there was lots of traffic and some narrow streets to navigate until after a few circles of the downtown I spotted a parking space big enough to house the BRT. Now the BRT is not big by RV standards but when looking for a downtown parking spot 22.5′ plus double bike rack can present a challenge, so happening across something like this was tantamount to having Moses be your parking guide and smiting the concrete with his trusty staff to open up a space. I careened into that spot like I had found the promised land and pulled up to the meter. Ike pulled the LRT into the space behind me with room to spare in between.

Immediately I began to question my good fortune. What city in their right entrepreneurial mind would make a parking lot space the size of the air craft carrier deck. I exited the beast to examine my good fortune more closely. There was only one meter and Ike had a meter for his space. A nice gentleman walking along reminded me that I had to put money in the meter but only until 6:00 and then it was free. I thanked him for the information and then realized from the machine he had in his hand that he was the meter man. So I asked him about the space being so large and as he looked at the beast he agreed it did seem somewhat oversized for a metered spot. Closer examination showed that an intervening meter had been removed and hadn’t been replaced. Talk about getting lucky.

Asheville was a very walkable city with lots to entertain us so it was fully 6:00 before we returned to our vehicles, after a tasty meal at a local pub and headed out again. We knew that there were several camping spots south of Asheville on the way to Hendersonville so we headed out on spec looking for camping signs along the way. After one false start at something called the Flea Market Camping Grounds which I think in hindsight we mercifully could not find we found a private campsite called Lake Land RV.

I am finding that the use of euphemism and allusion in campground names seems common. After some careful exploration the best I could determine was that the aforementioned ‘lake’ was some indentation adjacent to the office that had been filled with water through something approaching an oversized lawn sprinkler. In some Lilliputian world that body of water may have passed for a lake but in all honestly we hadn’t selected the location for its view, we needed to get settled before dark.

Day 13 -April 16

After some research the night before, what Lake Land lacked in aquatic vistas it made up for with Internet access, we found that there was going to be a great concert in Nashville on Tuesday night. We decided that with some pedal to the metal driving on the interstate that we might be able to make it there in time for the 7:30 concert that night.

Firstly however there was a bit of business that I wanted to take care of, I wanted to dump our grey water tank. For the benefit of the non RVers following this I will digress into this little bit of RV knowledge that I am assuming everyone has been curios about. I understand that the most frequently asked questions of astronauts are related to what happens to water and ‘waste’. I am assuming that the same questions have been plaguing our readers so I am about to provide you with some relief to those burning questions.

Firstly RV’s have on board ‘water management systems’. These systems consist of enough pipes, valves, connectors, by passes, tanks and pumps to make the Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory look like an Easy Bake Oven.

Firstly there is what is known as ‘land’ water that is the hose hook up that you have at most camping sites and this puts water directly to the kitchen sink, bathroom sink, shower and toilet as well as the outside shower. There is a small propane fired hot water tank in the system if that is required. This all runs on the pressure provided by the site services. There is also ‘house’ water. This is water that comes from an on board water tank and a 12v pump that provides water pressure. Some sort of by pass valve deep in the bowels of the beast gives preference to the ‘land’ water over the ‘house’ water whenever the BRT is hooked up.

With the exception of the toilet and of course the outside shower, all of this waste water flows into a holding tank that is called the grey water tank. The toilet water goes into a separate holding tank known as the black water tank, due more to a deference to good taste than descriptive accuracy I believe.

Through a series of pipe, hoses and valves these tanks can be emptied at what are known as ‘dumping’ stations – I think in this case an adherence to descriptive accuracy prevailed over good taste. This was the first time we had stayed at a site that had dumping hook ups right at the individual sites and I felt it was time to learn how to do this while I was only experimenting with ‘grey’ water. For those of you who have rented Robin Williams’ movie RV you will understand the trepidation with which I approached this seemingly innocuous task. When your ‘dump’ goes bad things get ugly fast.

So armed with the requisite disposable gloves, connectors, flexible hoses and due respect, I approached the task. Connections were made, checked and double checked, valves pulled and lo and behold grey water flowed – without event or the need for a hazardous waste clean up team. I had had my first successful ‘dump’ and like some toddler that had just graduated to toilet training I let out a bit of a yahoo, which I noticed was responded to by my neighbour, obviously a seasoned RVer, with something that sounded like ‘newbie’ under his breath. In Ike’s words, ‘you cut me to quick Shrek’. Next time I’ll keep my little successes to myself.

Having passed this milestone we headed out to Nashville. In a nutshell it was a day of hard white knuckle driving. Parts of the interstate have speed limits of 70 mph and most drivers are observing it. The ‘slow’ lane is doing 65. An unplanned bonus was we crossed a time zone and arrived in Nashville around 5:00 and checked into the Days Inn which we had booked on line. It’s great to have the confidence of a booked room when you arrive in town but there is some risk. for instance this particular establishment was undergoing an extensive renovation, the lobby was decorated in a style that I would call Early Bombed Out Beirut. Sheets of plastic hanging from the ceiling, carpet and tile stripped off the floor, wires strung everyone. A lovely welcome and no reduced rate but we were running late and had no time to negotiate a better deal.

A quick change of clothes and we arrived at the Bridgestone Arena in time to buy tickets on the floor. The concert was a fund raiser for the Music Hall of Fame and was hosted by Keith Urban and Vince Hall. The line up was incredible and included Roseanne Cash, Eric Church, Kid Rock, Cheryl Crowe, Jason Aldean, Chris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, Hank Snow Junior, Trace Atkins, Tim Mcgraw and more. It was like a lifetime bucket list of country music. Check out the whole line up at

http://countrymusichalloffame.org/keith-urban-we-re-all-for-the-hall-2013/

After the concert we walked around downtown and stopped in at a bar called Benchmark where a group unassumedly named the ‘Disappointments’ were playing. Fantastic musicians mixed with a great crowd patter was a winning combination for us. We were entertained with their country rock tunes until after midnight.trim.eTLuyC

Day 14- April 17

A lateish breakfast at 8:30 before we headed out with a plan to explore downtown Nashville. We had seen a lot of interesting spots as we walked around after the concert the night before. We visited the State Capital, where we spent some time getting through the security scan due mostly to the fact that both Ike and I had knives on our person. We had a nice security guard and I tried to make the point with him that Ike’s key chain Leatherman really stretched the definition of a knife. After getting our passes we spent some time admiring the spectacular building with all of its amazing limestone construction.

The Capital contains the Supreme Court, the Senate, the Legislature and the House of Representatives. It makes my head hurt trying to understand the American political system and I am amazed that anything gets passed but the system seems to work for them.

We then walked around downtown some more after a couple of stops for some non alcoholic hydration. It is stinking hot here and being next to a large river seems to have driven the humidity up much more than we have seen in earlier parts of our trip. At one point we were walking behind a guy in a dark suit who regardless of the heat was making his way promptly to some appointment. For a moment I couldn’t help but smile with the realization that I wasn’t that guy anymore. Life is good.

We wanted to see the so called music district of Nashville which was some walking distance away but as our plan for the day was to just get to the start of the Natchez Trace Parkway, a roadway similar to the Blue RidgeParkway, we felt we had some time to spare. However the walk was a bit longer than we anticipated and required another stop at a watering hole around 3:00 where we decided that possibly our walking plan should be curtailed and a taxi ride back to our hotel might get us out of Dodge before rush hour traffic. We took the opportunity of a wi-fi connection to Face Time Carla to see how Family # 2 were making out. Sean and Casey have returned safely from their trek of the Nepalese mountain sides and Carla is busy packing up the MRT.

During that conversation our plans evolved again. We decided that we would try to use the coupons on the back of our Nashville maps to get 50% off another night at our hotel. It should be pointed out that on this trip all plans are considered STC – subject to change.

In anticipation of a freed up schedule we did walk around the music district which was a pleasant walk around some older homes, many of which have been repurposed to corporate offices for music industry companies. We caught a cab back to downtown and then walked back to our hotel over the pedestrian bridge. Leaving the ‘women folk’ in charge of the negotiations, we now had more leverage than we did the previous night with the impending concert start we got our reduced rate. We spent another ( earlier) night walking about downtown and had a filling supper at Jacks Barbecue where not surprisingly there were no vegan offerings, who would have thought. Without any effort we found another watering hole, downtown Nashville makes George St. in St. John’s look like a temperance revival centre with two live bands to entertain us.