Okay… time to bring the blog up to date.  I finally got some of my photo download issues worked out for the time being.  So let me tell you about our day trip to Nashville and then I’ll follow up with separate blog posts about our trip back west to where we are now in Pahrump, NV.

Stilla and I drove the Silverado down to Nashville from the daughters house in Bowling Green, KY where we’ve been parked for the last two months.  This was on the 18th of September, just before we started our westward trek to make it to the Alpine SoCal Rally which starts on the 29th of September in Pahrump, NV.  But more about that in my next blog post.

We made the 67 mile trip from Bowling Green in about an hour and ended up in downtown Nashville for a little sightseeing.

The hardest part about visiting downtown Nashville was finding a parking spot.  We finally found a parking lot a couple blocks from downtown that cost us $21 for 4 hours.  Here’s some of our pics from the downtown area:

The pedal bar tours were pretty popular as you can see from the photos:

There were even “party barges” running around downtown:

After eating lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe we wandered through some of the stores and finally ended up on the the upper deck of the Rock Bottom Restaurant and Brewery which is the view in the picture below.

The highlight of our day trip to Nashville was stopping by to tour the Antique Archaeology store from the television series American Pickers.

There was quite a line of folks waiting to get in when we arrived.  There isn’t an entrance fee, but they limit the number of people in the store at any one time.  Definitely a popular tourist stop… they even had tour buses stop at the store which is only one small part of the larger Marathon Motor Works building which has been renovated to feature numerous different shops.

Hallway of the Marathon Motor Works building (below) leads to numerous little curio and antique stores.

A popular photo op in front of the door to the Antique Archaeology American Pickers store (below).  I think every other person that was waiting in line for their turn to enter the store took the same picture.

Inside the store:  I recognized many of the items in the store from episodes of the television series.  Maybe you recognize some items as well?

And yes, I got the t-shirt 🙂

Stilla took my picture (below) in front of the famous Von Dutch Volkswagen motorcycle that was featured in one of the American Pickers episodes.

One of the other shops in the Marathon Motor Works building sold Jack Daniels items and had a Jack Daniels themed Indian motorcycle on display:

This Cadillac (below) was showing off outside the building when we finished the tour, so I had to take a couple of pictures, right?

It looks like someone put the old early ’60s Cadillac body on an old Army 2 1/2 ton truck chassis.  What do you think?

We finished off our day trip to Nashville by stopping at the Parthenon which is a full-scale replica of the original Parthenon in Athens.  It was built in 1897 as part of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition.  Read more on this from my friend Wikipedia  (link here).

The Parthenon is located in Centennial Park just west of downtown Nashville.  The park is also where the famous Natchez Trace Parkway begins.

My friend Wikipedia® says:  The Natchez Trace, also known as the “Old Natchez Trace”, is a historic forest trail within the United States which extends roughly 440 miles (710 km) from Natchez, Mississippi, to Nashville, Tennessee, linking the Cumberland, Tennessee, and Mississippi Rivers.  The trail was created and used for centuries by Native Americans, and was later used by early European and American explorers, traders, and emigrants in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Today, the path is commemorated by the 444-mile (715 km) Natchez Trace Parkway and Bridge, which follow the approximate path of the Trace,[1] as well as the related Natchez Trace Trail. Parts of the original trail are still accessible and some segments are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

I’ve been told that the parkway is a popular drive that I’d like to do sometime in the future with the motorhome.

The Parthenon building was pretty impressive but unfortunately we couldn’t tour inside because they had already closed for the day.

After a full day of touring around Nashville, we drove back to Bowling Green to get ready to pack up and start heading west for our next adventure in the Urban Escape Vehicle.

Hope you enjoyed the pics from Nashville as much as we enjoyed taking them.  Stay tuned for the next installment which details our westward trek to Nevada…

 

Okay… better late than never – here’s post 2 of 2 on my son William’s visit to my daughter’s house in Bowling Green, KY.  William and his girlfriend Jasmin arrived on the 22nd of August and left on the 11th of September.

Other than just seeing the local sites, restaurants, shops, etc., – William also helped out with a couple projects around the house.  He helped paint a few of the interior doors, mowed the extensive lawn, etc.,  You might recall from previous blog posts that this is my youngest daughters (Joleen’s) first house along with her fiancé Dylan and one of the reasons we’re parked here is to help out with some of the renovations.

Over the labor day holiday, William & Jasmin went to rent a car so they could drive south and see some more sites on their own.  The rental agency upgraded them to a pickup truck for the same price due to the unavailability of a compact model.  They ended up at the beach in Pensacola FL and William also ended up with a sunburn 🙁

When Will & Jasmin returned from their labor day outing, we all (except for Dylan, who had to work) drove up to Clermont, KY to the Jim Beam Distillery for a tour:

Inside the distillery:

At the end of our distillery tour, we had the opportunity to fill our own personalized bottle of Knob Creek.

Then we walked through an area to watch the large scale bottling process.

At the end of the distillery area tour, we got to see a display room with all the old Jim Beam decanters that were sold throughout the years:

Here’s a little “Did you know” item… This is one of the original I Dream of Jeannie bottles that the TV series used (below).

We boarded the tour bus again to go over to one of the Aging Warehouses and the much-awaited tasting room:

We walked by various outbuildings to one of the aging warehouses.

Our tour guide explained how long each barrel is stored before bottling.  This display (below) shows how much whiskey is left in each barrel after a number of years due to evaporation i.e., “angels cut” and soaking into the charred wood of the barrel i.e., “devils cut”.

It was amazing how high the barrels are stacked in the warehouse.

Notice the Mila Kunis barrel (below) from the recent series of Jim Beam commercials.

After touring one of the barrel storage facilities our tour guide took us to the “tasting-room”.  A highlight for many of the tour guests, except for the fact the “tasting” is limited to tiny sips of 5 different brands.

All the Jim Beam brands on display:

The “tasting” machines automate and limit the amount each of us got to sample the various brands.  We were each given a swipe card loaded with five “tastes”.  You had to insert your card into the machine and press a button to get a “taste”.  Oh well, at least no one was going to get a DUI, right?

After navigating our way back through the gift shop with only a few small souvenirs (and payment for the personalized bottle during the tour) we headed back to the house in Bowling Green with a quick stop at Fort Knox.  We thought we’d check out the Patton Museum but we didn’t get through the gate because Will, Joleen, and Jasmin didn’t have ID cards and we would have to register at the  visitor gate building which looked like a long process and it was getting late.  So we just took pictures of the Gold Depository (←link) and headed on home.

Back at the house, Will & Jasmin bought a pool earlier for Joleen & Dylan so I even took my turn one day getting a sunburn.

On the last weekend of Will & Jasmin’s visit we had the opportunity to attend a “balloon glow” in Bowling Green.  It was nothing like the Albuquerque Balloon fest or others we’ve visited in the past like in Lake Havasu or Memorial Park in Colorado Springs, but still always cool to see.

On September 11th, a sad day for many reasons, we drove Will & Jasmin back up to the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport and said our farewells.

It was good seeing William & Jasmin again, hopefully again next year.

On the way back from the Cincinnati airport to Bowling Green we took the long way home (scenic byway) through Lexington.  At the beginning of our trip home we noticed that we would pass by the fairly new attraction “Ark Encounter” a life-sized Noah’s Ark, so we used the opportunity to stop by and check it out.

Entrance fee was $40 per person and $10 for parking.

There were several other “expensive” options at Ark Encounter as well.  None of which we took part of.

We boarded a bus for the short ride to the Ark.

Life-size Noah’s Ark.  Pretty impressive.

We toured each floor of Noah’s Ark to view stuffed animal displays and many, many small interpretive rooms where we fought the crowd to look at pictures, dioramas and displays.  My take-away was that it was a little overpriced and most of the interpretive displays too small and cramped for viewing with crowds of people.  It is definitely something to see once, but don’t think we’d go back again.  It was a lot of walking as the ramps inside between each floor extended the entire length of the Ark, then you’d circle each floor just to take another long ramp to the next floor.  View images (here).

---

I’m finishing up this blog post from Memphis, TN.  We said our farewells and ‘see-ya-laters’ to daughter Joleen & Dylan and hit the road on the 21st.  It was great staying with them for the last two months and we got a lot of renovations done on their new house.  Stilla especially enjoyed the quality time and use of a full kitchen while we were there 🙂  Love ya Joleen & Dylan, til next time!

My iPhoto program is still giving me some grief (it crashed again and I had to rebuild) and I finally broke down and got a new iPhone 6S and am working through how to get new pictures downloaded and saved for the blog.  It seems that I can’t just plug my phone into the laptop anymore and have the pictures download like a digital camera does.  All the pictures I take on my iPhone want to go to iCloud no matter what settings I make, so I have to manually download pictures from iCloud (which is a lengthy and convoluted process) before I can even edit and resize them.  So, I guess what I’m saying is that my next blog post might be awhile.  I have a lot of pictures that we took at Graceland yesterday that I’d like to share… anyway, stay tuned.

We’re still moochdocking at our youngest daughters’ house in Bowling Green, KY.  But we’re definitely paying for our spot in the way of house renovations and daily chores.

In the kitchen of Joleen & Dylan’s new house, I’ve done a lot of patching, sanding and priming on the walls…

and also on the ceiling…

The old kitchen cabinets extended all the way up to the ceiling.  I had to do a lot of scraping and repairing where the old paint and caulk lines left a distinct line across the ceiling.

Before…

and after…

Before…

and after…

We were lucky to be able to fix the holes and blemishes in the ceiling and match the existing texture without having to sand down and retexture  the whole ceiling.  After a fresh coat of paint it looks like new again 🙂

I also finished fixing all the wall surfaces that won’t be hidden behind the new cabinets.  After lots of hole patching, skimming and sanding, I put on a fresh coat of primer and paint.  I used “texture in a can” to hide all the minor blemishes.  There were lots of scratches along with high and low spots from scraping off the old wallpaper.

Stilla and Joleen picked out the wall color called ‘Tsunami Sky’.  I think it looks good and the ‘texture in a can’ works really well too.

The next step is to get the new kitchen cabinets installed.  Wish us luck 🙂

Since my last post, I did some research on a scooter that I had my eye on at a local motorsports store and ended up buying a Kymco Super 8 150X (←link).

We found out it was a mistake to leave the Harley in Arizona and take the Can-Am ATV along with us on this trip to KY.  There really isn’t any place nearby to get much use out of the ATV; but there are lots of cool winding, hilly roads here that are perfect for motorcycle riding.

The scooter is street-legal and gets up to 50-55 mph easily, even with both of us on it.  The 150CC engine seems to have plenty of power for scooting us along just fine.  I ended up getting a pretty decent deal for $2,125 out the door but am still expecting some registration fees from our domicile state of South Dakota once I get a permanent plate.  Now I just have to figure out how to haul both the ATV and scooter when we leave here… the scooter will add an additional 235 lbs.

While Stilla & I were out getting the new scooter, a micro-burst of heavy rain and wind came through the neighborhood and took down  some trees.  Here’s one that came down in the back yard (below).

Luckily, I had put the main awning in on the Urban Escape Vehicle before we left.  There doesn’t appear to be any damage but I do wish I had thought about running the satellite dish down.  The weather here has been great (hot & humid) with just some isolated rain storms that occasionally roll through.  So far, any rain storms have been brief or occur during the night.

The ATV came in handy with the front winch.  We hooked the winch cable up to the fallen tree and pulled it into the yard so we can cut it up.

Dylan’s boss Jim came by to help out.  Here we are hooking up some straps to the winch cable…

Jim pulled on a strap to help guide the tree while I winched it off the chain-link fence.

Now Joleen & Dylan will have a little firewood for their fireplace once we get the fallen tree cut up.

Check back soon for more exciting updates on home renovations, etc.,,,