Nashville Trip: Saturday

As most of you know (because I've been talking about it way too often), my family just returned from our trip to Nashville. It was great... but way too short. There was so much to see and do. We tried our best to cover a lot of territory, and we wore ourselves out on some days. But, I had a lot of fun, we saw some interesting places, and we heard beautiful music. I hope to go back to Nashville again very soon.

In the upcoming blog entries, I hope to provide some highlights of our trip. As with most of my posts, I didn't always take pictures of the most important events. (I guess I should say "make pictures" since that's the way everyone in Tennessee was saying it.) And, I'll probably write about the ridiculously non-interesting parts. But, maybe Aaron, Ketra, Mom or Dad will write in with their thoughts. Hopefully, I won't bore you... and yes, it'll take a few days to get it all posted. But, it'll be over soon... just like our vacation was. Now that I'm back to the grindstone, it is nice to look back on the week.

Mom and Dad arrived on Friday night so we'd be ready to go on Saturday morning. After a long morning of tying up details, we finally headed out. I can't believe Nashville is so close to St. Louis and that I had never been there before. (This is where I must interject that I actually have been there as a young child, but I don't remember any of it.) On our way south, we did make a return trip to a place where I HAD been before: Metropolis, IL.

Flashback to a previous vacation: I may be corrected, but I think I was in high school and Aaron was in middle school when we took a particular family trip to southern Illinois. Our family vacations often consisted of Dad taking us off the beaten path to see state parks, artistic events, or oddities. Dad prepared for the outing by making a long list of sights we could see, and before handing the list back to Dad, we were supposed to place our initials by anything on the list that was interesting to us. Then, Dad could plan out the driving route so we could cover the favorites. We made several stops on that trip (including this stop at Metropolis to see the tributes to Superman) and as we were nearing the end of the vacation, I think I got really upset and asked when we were finally going to see something that I picked. Dad didn't understand. He thought he had been hitting the highlights that I wanted. Little did he know, Aaron had gone through the list and placed MY INITIALS plus his own next to everything he wanted to see!!! I can still picture Aaron laughing so hard right across from me in that backseat. (I am sure that was right before - and after - I punched him.)

Metropolis is not only the home for Superman... but also for Big John.

We then drove on to our home for the week, the Wyndham Nashville. The condos were so nice and big. Here's a portion of the resort from across the meadow. And, this picture shows less than 1/2 of the main room for each unit - just to give you an idea of the nice furnishings. I was very excited to see we had a whirlpool tub!!!












After running some errands, going for a late-night grocery shopping trip, and eating an even later supper, we were tired. But, we were happy to be in our comfortable room for a good night's sleep... because we would need to be getting up early in the morning for church.