Day 5, April 20, A short hop to Nashville

After a great breakfast at Niedlov's Bakery downtown (see photos below), we left Chattanooga this morning and made the drive to Nashville, about two and one-half (2-1/2) hours away.

(Niedlov's is highly recommended, if you visit Chattanooga!)

Mind you, it's not particularly long in driving standards, but driving an RV is more challenging and taxing, than driving your normal car. It takes much more of your concentration and physical energy. At least that has been my experience to date. There is the wind load on the vehicle, for which a sudden gust can cause the vehicle to quickly shift. There is the driving past trucks and having trucks (mostly 18-wheelers) drive past you. It can be unnerving, if you focus on it too much. My wifely has very wisely planned that our trips are no more the 3-1/2 hours per day between layovers. The 3-1/2 hour leg will occur when we leave Nashville on Friday, drive through Knoxville and stop in Jefferson City, TN for the evening.

We made it to Nashville about 12:30 CST, made our way to the hotel and got checked in. After transferring clothing and toiletries from the RV to the hotel room, we immediately went out to make our way through downtown Nashville to have lunch and to visit to the new National Museum of African American Music (NMAAM).

Some scenes from downtown Nashville and the restaurant where we ate lunch....

(Trattoria Il Mulino, where we had an excellent lunch. Patrise had calamari appetizer and spaghetti and meatballs entree; I had a small Caesar salad and chicken parmigiana.)

The NMAAM is incredible! It is much too much, to absorb in just one visit. So we highly recommend that you plan to visit it over two to three days, in order to get the full breadth and depth of the museum and its many exhibits. It documents the history of African American music from our earliest days as slaves and the music traditions brought from the African continent, all the way to the contemporary world of hip-hop, rap, house music and more. It covers the important movements and artists of spirituals, gospel, blues, jazz: the intersections of jazz and rock 'n' roll, gospel and classical, blues and country, and more. And the history of African American music is frankly, the history of American music.

Below are some of the many pictures I took while touring the museum.

We were quite tired after the visit to the museum. Thus, upon returning to the hotel, I lay down to take a nap. Although tired, it took a while for me to fall asleep, but eventually I did. Unfortunately, it seems I had to wake up almost as soon as I had gone to sleep. It certainly felt that way, at any rate.

We changed clothes and prepared for the evening, then walked over to the office of Barge Design Solutions (BDS). BDS is an engineering company with a long, distinguished history, and its corporate headquarters is based in Nashville. The purpose for our detour to Nashville was for Patrise and I to join the board of directors and their spouses in a dinner this evening, preceding the Board of Directors quarterly meeting tomorrow. And I have been invited to join the BDS board, and I am very much looking forward to the experience.

That will be a topic of tomorrow's blog entry, and so until then, good night!