3 States in 3 Days

Sunday morning my sister and I got up super early to leave for a little Spring Break Road Trip. We were headed to Nashville, Tennessee. Ashleigh was going to visit her BFF, Stephanie, and I was just going because I've never been to Tennessee and I'm never going to make it to all 50 states if I never leave Texas! So, off we went. This is what it looked like for the first couple hours of the drive...


We made it to Arkansas in record time...


After we crossed the border we stopped at a truck stop to take a quick break that turned out a little longer. It is very difficult to get out of these places, especially when there is a long line of truck drivers purchasing fuel. They have to give everything short of a blood sample it seems. Anyway, we hit the road again and before we knew it we were across the Mississippi River and into Tennessee...


I loved driving through most of Arkansas and Tennessee. The hills and trees made it a very pretty drive.

Monday morning, Ashleigh and I got up early again (something that is so NOT a gift of either of us) and explored Nashville. We saw the Parthenon. No, we weren't actually in Greece. Nashville has the only full-scale replica of The Parthenon in the world. I'm not really sure why. We also saw Opryland, some Civil War-era Plantations, Civil-War battlefields, Hard Rock Cafe, Music Row, Vanderbilt University, and many other things.



In the afternoon we headed to a little suburb south of Nashville called Franklin. The cool thing about Franklin is that pretty much anybody who is somebody in the Country/Christian music world lives there. It's a really cute little town but, unfortunately, there were no star sightings. We did, however, find Steven Curtis Chapman's house! I mean, we found the driveway. But still, it was very cool.

After we were finished stalking, I mean sight-seeing, we spent some time learning about the Battle of Franklin. This was the bloodiest 5 hours of the Civil War. We also saw a house that still has bullet holes in the walls. We just talked about the Civil War in Social Studies at school so all of this was a little more interesting to me. Here's some more pictures from the Carter House...




Monday night we went back to Franklin with Stephanie and her husband, Ryan to eat. We had a really fun time and laughed a lot! Tuesday morning we got up early AGAIN! This time we hit the road to head home. We made it to Nashville in about 10 hours but it took us about 14 hours to get home! We made several interesting stops along the way...

GRACELAND

I'm honestly not really a huge Elvis fan but felt like I'll probably never have the opportunity to tour Graceland again, so we went for it. I do have one concern. If you're going to charge $33 to see the house maybe you could at least have free parking? Ashleigh lucked out because she still has her Baylor ID card (they don't have dates on them) and she got the student price. A few hours later she realized she was wearing her Baylor ALUMNI shirt!

The tour was interesting and I'm glad we did it. My favorite part was watching the people who were obviously huge Elvis fans. I'm talking Elvis shirts, Elvis pants, Elvis everything. I think I even saw some people a little teary-eyed at his grave. We also got to see Elvis' cars and go inside his airplanes. It isn't documented anywhere but Elvis may have been a Baylor fan. Green and yellow were used often throughout his planes.












THE LORRAINE MOTEL and NATIONAL CIVIL RIGHTS MUSEUM

The Lorraine Motel was where Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed while visiting Memphis in 1968. It's actually closed on Tuesdays so we didn't get to go in the museum. It was very cool to see a very important part of America's history, not really good history, but history none the less.




BIG DAM BRIDGE

After our two Memphis stops we were back on the road again. We drove about two more hours to Little Rock, Arkansas. In Little Rock, there is a dam on the Arkansas River. In the last couple years the city built a pedestrian bridge that goes over the dam. People walk, run, and bike across the almost 1-mile bridge. I guess they felt like calling it what it is, a Big Dam Bridge. It was a beautiful day in Little Rock so there were tons of people out exercising on the bridge. We walked about halfway across and then turned around. It was good to get out of the car for awhile.



After Little Rock it was long 5 and half hours home. We made it home at about 10:15. It was very quick, but very fun little trip. I think I can officially cross Tennessee off my "States to Visit" list.