We spent four weeks in Nashville and had an amazing time, so this post may be a little longer than usual. We started at the Nashville KOA, which is next to the Grand Ole Opry and very close to the downtown area. It was a nice park with live music by the pool several times a week, which we had the chance to enjoy multiple times. They also had a shuttle bus that ran from the park to downtown.

A couple of days after we arrived, Kim’s daughters flew into town to celebrate Kim’s birthday. We had dinner at an amazing local restaurant called Husk. We all ordered different things, so we got to sample a large selection of their menu. It was by far some of the best food we have ever eaten. The next item on the birthday agenda was Kim getting her first tattoo (and probably her last). It took almost three hours to complete and was much more painful than she expected. Thankfully Brianna and Hailey were there to comfort her through the process. David was fired from the job halfway through because shockingly he doesn’t talk enough to take someone’s mind off the pain. Sarah (the tattoo artist) did an amazing job of recreating the boathouse. Now Kim will always have a part of her boating days with her. Brianna and Hailey also snuck in another tattoo each while we were there. David is the only one left without a tattoo… maybe someday he will get one. Then we were off to the Grand Ole Opry. This is an absolute must if you are ever in Nashville. Ricky Skaggs was among the artists playing that night. We were all really impressed with show and got to go on the backstage tour afterwards. We learned about the history of the opry and got to stand center stage in the infamous circle. In the next few days, we tried some of the local BBQ at Peg Leg Porker, had hot chicken from Bolton’s, found the wing mural, and partied on Broadway. Broadway Street is about 4 blocks long and is lined with bars owned by some of the top music artists. Most of them have multiple floors, rooftop bars, food, and different bands on each floor. It is the best live music area we have experienced. We had a great night together enjoying the music, drinks and dancing. Hailey was on a mission to find a cowboy, but sadly she did not find a suitable one. The next day we visited the Country Music Hall of Fame, where Kim got her 1st real senior discount. It is very well done and worth the visit. Thanks to Brianna and Hailey for taking the time out of their very busy schedules to celebrate Kim’s birthday with us. I hope they know how much it meant to Kim.

We had some time before our next visitors arrived, so we headed out to see Andrew Jackson’s home, The Hermitage. What a beautiful homestead with lots of history. In 1835, president Jackson was the first and only president to ever get the US completely out of debt, which, of course, Kim appreciated. We also visited the old Marathon Motor Works building, which now houses multiple shops and distilleries. They have kept a lot of the old machines in place and have some of the original cars. It was very interesting to learn some of the history about Marathon Motors. The next day, we took a double decker bus tour of downtown Nashville. We learned more about the history of Nashville and saw lots of the sights around town. We also went out to dinner at the Jack Daniels Restaurant in The Gaylord Resort. That is a huge hotel with a massive indoor atrium. We now understand why they give you a map when you check in. We attended the Whiskey Jam, which was on a rooftop of the Assembly Food Hall, and we ate at the 60 Vines restaurant with Randy Travis (it still counts even if he was not at our table).

Then our next visitors arrived, Kim’s brother Keith and his wife. Jenn is an amazing trip planner. She had a complete schedule of fun things to do lined up for us. They picked us up on Broadway (we were there watching an artist (Jason McPhail) that played for us the night before on the shuttle bus back to the RV park) and we went to The Parthenon, which is an exact replica of the original temple in Athens, Greece. It was very impressive. The next day we did a walking food tour in East Nashville. We got to sample food from five different restaurants. This was a great way to get to know the area. We also walked by Oprah’s High School during the tour. We had BBQ chicken at the RV and then took a two-step dance class that Jenn had lined up for us. The instructor spent quite a bit of one-on-one time with David 🙂 We all went back down to Broadway to check out some more of the bars and listen to music. Jenn also planned an agave tasting/class for us. We never imagined there was so much to learn about tequila! Then we topped it all off with another visit to The Grand Ole Opry with them. We really enjoyed our time with Keith and Jenn and hopefully they will track us down during our travels again sometime soon.

Now it was time for us to move to our next RV park. We moved to Four Corners RV Resort in Antioch, on the J Percy Priest Reservoir and only about 20 miles from downtown Nashville. We had a back in spot right on the reservoir, with an awesome view from the right side of our 5th wheel (that is the side with the majority of the windows). That spot only lasted two days, before we got a call from the office that we needed to move. They were opening the upper dam, due to all the rain and the reservoir was expected to rise by six feet. So, we moved to higher ground and within two days, our new spot was waterfront also. All of those lower spots in the campground were now under water. The reservoir receded after about five days (because they opened the lower dam), so we moved again to get back on the water. We sure miss living on the water. This campground turned out to be awesome despite the flooding and has definitely been added to our short list of places to revisit. We also met some fellow Luxe owners (Michelle and Traci) in the park. We got to spend some time getting to know them and sharing maintenance knowledge of our coaches. What great people! We hope to meet up with them again sometime. We did venture out on the motorcycle and found the largest privately owned civil war cemetery in the town of Franklin. We also took the time to explore the downtown area of Franklin. Franklin is a nice little town with lots of shops and restaurants along their main street. We enjoyed a night out at The Tasting Room, where we got to do a wine tasting and a food tasting. David also found the house he lived in as a kid. He lived in SW Nashville for about 18 months when he was in grade school. He also found the drainage ditch he and his brothers use to hike down. It sure was a lot smaller than he remembered.

We had a couple more visitors while we were on the reservoir. Joe and Katie, our LM friends, stayed with us in the RV. We spent the first evening relaxing at the campground around the fire, BBQing and roasting marshmallows. We also discovered that Joe likes to drink his wine out of our new salt and pepper grinders (we do have plenty of wine glasses). Who knew there were more things we hadn’t discovered in Nashville. We toured the Ryman Auditorium while Joe and Katie were in the Country Music Hall of Fame. We also found Printer’s Alley and listened to some blues music there. Joe and Katie loved the live music (as do we), so we spent the evening listening to music and dancing. Their last day, we made another trip to downtown Nashville and toured the Johnny Cash Museum. We tried to visit the Bourbon Steak rooftop restaurant at the Marriot, which was closed, but we did take in the spectacular views from the 34th floor. We really enjoy having visitors during our travels and so everyone knows, we have updated our travel plans page on our website through March of 2025. Check and it out and come visit us. The next stop is Pigeon Forge…

Last but not least again, the unusual things we saw or did at this stop: Guy walking a large stuffed horse on Broadway; bathroom that was labeled “whichever”; guy on Broadway with a sign that said, “Will feed your ex to the alligators for $5.00”; Fit 4 of us (Brianna, Hailey, Kim, David) in the smart car to go a mile down the road.