Nashville and Atlanta

Greetings, y'all!  Can you say Loretta Lynn, Minnie Pearl and Martin Luther King Jr.?

We have spent the last four days seeing two of the most "southern" of the cities of the South.  We spent a day driving to Nashville, a day in Nashville, a day driving to Atlanta and now a day in Atlanta (sort of).  We've seen a lot of countryside!

Nashville is the capital of Tennessee and the birthplace of country music via the Grand Ole Opry.  We stayed near the music quarter and saw the Country Music Hall of Fame and Ryman Theatre, where the broadcasts of Hee Haw and the Grand OO began.

The Country Music Hall of Fame was very well done and interesting.  We spent three hours there, listening to early recordings, watching videos (including Elvis on the Ed Sullivan Show) and looking at gold and platinum records and other awards.  We came away with a new respect for the music genre and for its  history.  Did you know that Bakersfield CA was a main force in the evolution of country?

We toured the Ryman with a guide which allowed us to go back stage and see some of the dressing rooms.  Even though the GOO has a new (since the 70s) home out at Opryland, performances are still happening there on a regular basis; Vince Gill will play there in a few days.

For dinner, we went to a restaurant with great southern cooking - Jon finally found "southern fried chicken" - and live music.  A fine fiddler named Lauren McGhee - Scot turned local - entertained us.

Yesterday, Friday, we drove down here to Atlanta via a stop at Opryland, new home of the GOO.  It was quite a complex and we spent some time trying to find the new Opry house amidst the mall, hotel etc.  It was worth the stop though.  It's fun to see the autographed photos and to stand where some pretty famous people have stood.  Unfortunately some guys were doing some electrical work on stage preparing for a big show so we couldn't go there, but it was still a thrill.

After that stop, we spent too many hours in the car, in part because of a traffic accident on the freeway in Chattanooga and in part because we hit Atlanta at evening rush hour.  We are actually staying in Stone Mountain, east of the city by about 20 miles, but we still had to travel the ring road when lots of people were going home for the weekend.  We made it to our hotel by about 6 pm.

Today we spent the morning at Stone Mountain.  I hesitate to call it an amusement park because it is so much more than that, but it is a very family friendly spot with activities for all ages.  We took the gondola up to the top of Stone Mountain, a dome shaped solid granite monolith.  It was spectacular even though the day was cloudy.  Once on the ground again, we walked around a bit and took a train ride around the base of the mountain.

We wanted to go into Atlanta to see the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial and complex so after lunch we got in the car and headed back into the city.  We went to the Visitor Center (it's a National Park Service property) where we found a good display and a half hour movie celebrating his life.  Afterwards, we walked up a block to the house where he was born.  We also visited his memorial, a long pool with fountains, an eternal flame and the marble stone with his and Coretta King's epitaphs on it.  It was very moving.  Finally we visited the restored Ebenezer Baptist Church where Dr. King preached.  It is now the way that it appeared when he was there in the 50s and 60s.
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On the way back to the hotel we stopped back at Stone Mountain to see the Antebellum Plantation there.  It is comprised of buildings that have been moved from all over Georgia, including a mansion, store, barn and slave cabins.

Now we are preparing to drive to northern Florida tomorrow to visit Jon's former room mate, Dick Peterson.  We've enjoyed having 2 two night stays but we're eager to explore Florida too!

Photos:  photo of Dolly Parton and her duet partner at the Country Music Hall of Fame, a look down the main music street in Nashville, fried green beans for dinner, the stage at the Grand Ole Opry, Stone Mountain and it's famous sculpture in stone of Robert E Lee, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson, sculpture outside the NPS Martin Luther King museum - reminds me of the "Roots" TV series, inside the museum there was a life size exhibit of a civil rights march, and the famous church home of MLK.