Day 8,


Howdy there everyone,

Wow this has been a long day so far!!

I left Memphis and the Mississippi this morning early ( i always loved the Huck finn and Tom Sawyer stories) The place i was staying was right by the river also! I drove down Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, then i got on the Interstate but everyone is back to work today after Labor day and there was a 5 car pile up on the I-40 to Nashville!
So i was creeping along for a while but eventually got going,

My first stop was at a small town (cant remember name just now!)
which contained the Casey Jones house and Museum and The Old Country store, the country store was fantastic! A trip back through time!
I had my breakfast there,(almost comparable to The Big Texan!) and its been there since the 1800's and hasnt changed that much! Great home made ice cream too! Everything is real olde worlde there and it sells Everything! lots of home made stuff.
Its all completely made of wood too.
Across the road then was the home of Casey Jones who was a famous Locomotive driver who died saving all his passengers from a collision in the early 1900s. His last words were to his co driver when he told him to jump from the train while he kept his hand on the brake till the last moments. All passengers survived except Casey.
An old tour guide called Troy told me all this.
Troy is about 80 and sounds like he smokes a zillion cigarettes a day, i got a snap of him, i asked him how he was and he said "Mean as hell, Sonny!!!" Crazy old codger.
So said goodbye to him and
then i hit the road again and deeper into Tennessee. I was listening to Johnny Cash today in the car which felt right.

I stopped off at the Belle Maude mansion in Bellevue which used to own about 3,500 acres.
back in the 1800's it kept about 200 slaves, grew a lot of cotton and bred famous racehorses and held hugely grand parties. All the trees around it are alive with crickets, (as was Memphis too!)
Its an historic place now and the once owners were one of the first to emancipate all their Slaves and let them work the land for themselves so good for them.
Up to the 1970s there were still people occupying the slaves cabins.
Actually all the houses in this area are Mansions, Mostly white with those big pillars on the outside, theres just loads of trees full of crickets and massive Southern houses! It was something else.
I finally got to Nashville kinda late, found a place near down town, i went out to take a few pics but the sun was going down fast, i walked down to the Country hall of fame and went into a few old famous record shops on the main broadway street.
The world famous Grand Ole Opry is a few miles away so i might get to see that tomorrow.
I realised i was starving then so i had some food at the hardrock cafe.
Its got a giant neon guitar spinning round outside,

Nashville is certainly a surprise, the buildings here like the Country hall of fame and the convention centre are really new and modern and fantastic modern architecture. Loads of bars with country music too, people on the outside trying to drag you in!
There was a tourist booth in part of the street and i asked the Lady in there for a street map, She told me almost everything that could be known about Nashville!
i ended up talking to her for about half an hour! took her picture too and funny enough she took a few of me aswell!
Later then i went to A Blues bar (I know, kind of out of place in Nashville) but i heard the unmistakable sound of a sustained A minor coming from a Stratocaster guitar, so i went in to check it out. The band were good too!
Tomorrow then i have to do a lot of driving to get somewhere between Nashville and Washington DC.
Normally i never know where im going to end up at the end of the day but thats part of the adventure!

Right im off for now,Who knows where ill end up tomorrow, i have no plan!!
thanks for the comments yesterday!

Ill sleep tonight!

Shea.