After the zoo, we took a drive down Broadway, and then went to the Gaylord Opryland Hotel.  Everyone thought I was crazy for dragging them to a hotel, but the place is HUGE (9 acres of indoor gardens, 2,881 guest rooms) and it was all decorated for Christmas with over 2 million lights – amazing!  In return for humoring me by going to the hotel, the family made me eat at Dave & Busters, where Norah dumped a giant Shirley Temple on herself and Ben (karma?).  It’s hard to imagine that the hotel and the mall next door were under water after a flood in 2010.

I didn’t take enough photos to give any sense of how gigantic the atria are, but here are a few:

To give this “tree” some scale, the trees at the bottom right are full-sized trees.

How do they get lights on every branch?

We stopped at the Grand Ole Opry for a photo op:

The morning after we arrived at our destination, we loaded the kids into the car again and headed for Nashville.  Why?  Because we’re crazy like that.  It was a 2-hour drive so it seemed like a walk in the park compared to the previous 3 days of driving.

Our first stop was the Nashville Zoo, another freebie thanks to our MOS membership.  It’s a really nice zoo – very clean with roomy enclosures.  The kids loved the playground and feeding the Lorikeets.

The meerkats were so cool.  When a plane flew over they all watched it.

Ew.

After spending the night in Dublin, Virginia, we started the next day with a swim and by finally pulling out Norah’s loose tooth.  She had been developing a big gap between two of her baby teeth while the new tooth pushed everything out of the way, and the tooth finally got loose enough for me to pull out.  This is the before picture:

On the way to one of my favorite places – Grassy Cove, Tennessee, we stopped at the Museum of Appalachia in Clinton, Tennessee.  Again, it was almost deserted, which is sad but which I take a guilty pleasure in…no lines, no waiting.  The museum has a house and barn with a very eclectic collection of items with good explanations of the story behind each piece.  For example, one exhibit was a glass eye and a small pocket knife.  As the story goes, a 6-year-old boy was bent over tying his shoe while holding the open pocket knife.  His shoelace broke and he stabbed himself in the eye (“JOHNNIE!  HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I TOLD YOU NOT TO TIE YOUR SHOE WITH AN OPEN POCKET KNIFE IN YOUR HAND?!?!”).  How someone procured this and found someone who knew the story is beyond me.

There are 30+ other small buildings to explore – most of them a bit dusty but still a great stop.  One of the buildings had three musicians playing what is apparently Appalachian music although I’m not sure what defines it as such.  When the musicians found out that Aliya plays the violin, they played a fiddle tune just for her.  The weather was beautiful and we had lunch in the restaurant attached to the gift shop which was very good.  I found out that a pimento cheese sandwich has shredded cheese, mayo, and pimentos.  I went with the turkey pot pie instead.

I think I’m destined to live in a tiny cabin like this at some point in my life.  It really appeals to me because it would force me to get rid of all but the most important stuff.  The proximity of the bed to the woodstove scares me though.  A guy really lived here.

I found these concrete signs really interesting.  Harrison Mayes had a plan to erect them on the moon and all of the planets, as well as a lot of countries.  I have a lot of respect for someone who has a passion and aims high, even if they’re considered something of a kook. 

We finally made it to Grassy Cove just before dinner on Sunday.  We were all extremely happy to get out of the car and away from each other.

We’re currently on a family road trip to Tennessee for Thanksgiving.  We left Friday afternoon and got as far as Parsippany, New Jersey before a 5-mile traffic tie-up convinced us to stop for the night a little early and give the kids some extra time in the pool.  Judging from the number of dead deer we saw along the road the next morning, it was probably a good idea to travel that stretch during the day.

Saturday, Ben and Aliya were pushing to try to make it all the way to Tennessee, but 12 hours in the car didn’t fly with me.  I’ve had a tough time convincing the rest of the family that it’s all about the journey, and they really didn’t want to stop.  I forced the issue and we decided to stop at the Whitaker Center in Harrisburg.  We almost detoured instead to the Thanksgiving parade that we happened to arrive just in time for, but I got outvoted on that one.

The Whitaker Center turned out to be great!  Even better, we got in for free because of our Museum of Science membership.  It had a ton of interesting exhibits and it was almost deserted.  We spent a couple of hours there and then Ben, Adlani, and Norah had lunch while Aliya and I went to the capitol complex to check out some doors for my other blog.

Here are some photos from the Whitaker Center:

This was my favorite exhibit – a graffiti wall that you paint on with an electronic spray can.

The hurricane chamber:

After we were finished at the museum, we got on the road and headed for Roanoke, to have dinner at Blues Barbecue.  We had eaten there on another road trip and it was worth a return visit.  Norah passed out, but not before she finished her chicken nuggets.