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| Nashville from the Cumberland River |
After talking it over with my boyfriend, we started looking out west in Wyoming and quickly found out that even a year in advance, we were too late to the party. Rooms were booked in the path of totality. This was beyond frustrating - I wanted to be ahead of the curve and instead I was playing catch up. So, out came that Washington Post map and we looked at areas all over the west. With the path cutting from Oregon to South Caroline, we had options - or so we thought. Everywhere we looked was booked. So, we gave up on our western wishes and started looking at alternatives. We already knew that Charleston would be out as a option since we visited last year AND the summer weather runs a higher risk of storms. In the center of the country, a few mid-western cities had options - St Louis, Kansas City, Nashville... I had been to all of them but John had not. Nashville seemed like the best option. He really wanted to visit and my last trip there was over 10 years ago. It was the biggest major city on the path. When I found a room with a decent rate in the burbs of Nashville, and I locked that in immediately. With rooms booking around $700-$800/night, finding something under $150 was a treasure. Decision made!
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| The Hermitage |
I also wanted to plan the trip for fun outside of the main event. Price gouging was already underway a year in advance. This meant we needed to lock things down, but after looking at the airline prices, and fuming over the prices (of over $700/person), we decided to drive to Nashville. This would give us more flexibility and add to our mobility in the city.
Flash forward a year, with an ambitious itinerary laid out, we left for Tennessee on a Friday afternoon, well ahead of the crowds... or so we thought. After a night in Knoxville, we arrived at the Hermitage to insane crowds. People were parking in the grass fields. As the afternoon temperatures soared, the line to view Andrew Jackson's house kept growing. It was here, that we heard for the first time that Nashville was unprepared for the crowds of the weekend. We waited for over 1.5 hours to walk through the home; afterwards, I walked some of the grounds, before we both retreated to the air conditioned museum. But these lines meant that our plan to visit Belle Meade had to be scrapped. We had enough time to make it to Brentwood, check into the hotel, change and head into the city for our dinner cruise.
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| The General Jackson |
I booked a dinner cruise on the General Jackson before our trip. I wanted one nice dinner on the trip. We both were hoping to see a show while in town. This combined both. The meal was served family style, and was filled with plenty of options - chicken and short ribs, mac& cheese, mashed potatoes and tri-color carrots. Since we had not eaten since breakfast at the hotel, we were starved. It was fun and we had a few moments to take city skyline pictures outside downtown before the musical revue revved up. I should have gotten off the boat. With "regulars" saying that I was in for a treat, my expectations were high, but I guess my Broadway taste buds have spoiled me... or maybe it was my desire to watch a sexist show put on for dirty old men.
Why do I feel like that? Well, the show troupe was comprised of 7 players - 1 master of ceremonies and 6 rotating group members, 3 men, 3 women. The show was filled with costumes and music... costumes for the women and jeans and flannel shirts for the men! Yep - they wore jeans the whole show (until the last number where they put on suits), and the women changed dresses every song. Their outfits were short, or backless or mid-drifted, or slit up to their hip or any combination of those, sometimes all of it. Never did any women come out in jeans or even a jean skirt. Nope - just skin. And when they got the audience involved, the men typically were reserved while the women fawned all over the old men while the audience cheered. I swear it got so bad, one of the ladies flashed the entire audience showing off her dress slit while walking the stairs, another one ended up with her skin tight skirt around her waist while she was dancing... the outfits were not appropriate for what they were doing I am not sure the dinner was worth this insult (and I say that as a former dancer). Better music was found on the strip. The show was mediocre at best. It was not worth asking price for sure.  |
| The Parthenon |
We were glad we got better options the next day when we focused on downtown. We got into the city early to catch the trolley (I bought my tickets early), and started exploring. We headed right to the Hall of Fame and got caught in more lines. We were sheparded into a movie on Shania Twain, one of the season's inductees, and came out to lines out the door... we worked our way through this line we could have missed and made it upstairs. Thank goodness we are both tall because we were able to see over crowds to see into displays. We were choosey about what booths we wanted to listen and play in because we could not spend all day in here...After running through the Print Shop store (the tour was sold out), we hopped back on the trolley to my big Nashville priority - the Parthenon. I had seen it before, but I wanted to see inside... and NOPE. I did not get to visit Athena again. Lines for this site were the length of the park since it was only open a half day! As I said, the city was not ready! They admitted it!
Back on the trolley to find food. We had hoped to try the famous hot chicken. But NOPE. That line was over 2 hours. So we instead ate Mexican. We needed food because we had a ghost pub tour that night (I got those tickets months in advance). But before the tour, we had enough time to finish the trolley ride around Music City (and down Music Row) and squeeze in a visit to the Johnny Cash museum. So after a quick flip through Cash's greatest hits, we toured 3 downtown pubs, heard some fun ghostly trivia and learned about the evolution o Nashville into the city it is today. After the tour, we stayed in the last bar to listen to some live music and chat with other eclipse chasers... we were even gifted with MoonPies.
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| Steampunk Welder Glasses |
The key event was Monday. After the lines of the last few days, we were determined to make it to our destination early. I planned for us to watch the eclipse from Stones River National Battlefield. While the eclipse was not until 1:28, we had plenty to keep us busy. We toured the park museum and watched the history movie, attended the park lecture on the eclipse, and viewed the sun through various sunscopes NASA sky watchers had set up for us. This was the perfect location - open field, no obstructions, surrounded by nature and a limited crowd. The experts there were a HUGE help... really a blessing. Not only did they give us context... they also saved my entire eclipse experience that scammers tried to ruin. I had made every attempt to be prepared for this event. I bought glasses early, I got myself solar filters for my camera, I made sure I had what we needed. Only Amazon scared me a week earlier with an email telling me my glasses could be no good. Could be! Not were! We were left to our own devices since everything was sold out.  |
| Park Civil War actor and NASA Watcher |
Thank goodness the Park Service had some on hand just in case (and we bought some overpriced paper glasses in Nashville). The NASA watcher looked at my glasses and de-stressed me when he showed me how the glasses were okay! And he saved me again when the camera filters I bought turned out to be CRAP. That is right Best Buy - your solar filters would have blinded me. Instead, this man had a paper hood for my camera with a solar filter... and it saved my day... for pictures. The weather was another story.
The skies were clear all morning (and we got there by 8:30am). And then the eclipse started... the crowd cheered. And the clouds rolled in. Not kidding! Clouds! Huge clouds! It was some kind of cosmic joke. This giant cloud would part every few minutes and we could glimpse the progression of the eclipse, but we were denied a chance to see the moon creep across the sun after the first third was covered. It was frustrating.... what was scary was when the Park Ranger came into the crowd to tell us the eclipse was over. The size of the cloud, the fact that it wasn't moving coupled with totality occurring in 10 minutes, things did not look good. I was crestfallen. I joked that we should all blow really hard. The Ranger didn't think this was funny. I did. I was trying to laugh since weather always seems to impact my trips. Here we were with no rain, but a huge random storm cloud formed on a perfect day... UGH. I loudly proclaimed that we drove to far to miss this and begged the cosmos to be kind. And not more than the last second did those clouds part enough for the clear view of magic. Pure Magic. The crowd went wild. Kids started screaming. Birds got quiet. Night insects started humming. And the moon locked in. The park shot off its cannon as if to add an exclamation mark on the event. The countdown was on. In Stones River, our totality was shorter than in the city... we were clocking in around 1 minute 10 seconds. Not a lot of time to soak the moment, but you can. You push your button on your camera and hope for the best. You think about eclipses past and what people must have thought when this happened. You wonder what the animals are thinking. You marvel at the science behind tracking these events. You memorize the feelings of the temperature drop, the sight of the sun's corona (aura). It is all doable in a little of a minute. It was amazing.
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| Diamond Ring Phase The Total Eclipse is Over! |
The clouds gathered around the sun not long after totality. The crowd marveled at what we just witnessed. And we cleaned up. We were driving south to Lynchburg to the Jack Daniels Distillery. On that hour drive, I started posting some pictures to Twitter and Instagram... and after the tour I found out my pictures had been used in a Washington Post Article on some of the best eclipse pictures out there... WOW! Thank you WAPO.
The Jack Daniel's tour was like a long commercial talking about how special their whiskey is... a commercial you pay for. On it, we saw the spring that is the only water used to make the whiskey. We learned how they make their own charcoal, how the water is stewed in oats, corn and barley and yeast. We smelled the fermentation process. They walked us through their famous barrel process. And then you end up in a shop where you can buy your whiskey. To me, it reminded me of the Coor's tour I took last year in Golden CO with a friend. I don't drink so many be all this just sounds the same to me?
That night be headed back to town, walked around a bit listening to some music, ate a nice meal and went for a carriage ride through downtown. We didn't have time to do everything we wanted on the trip, but wow did we try!
I have never considered myself an eclipse chaser, but this one felt different. I felt like I needed to see it... and wow, my instincts were right! Now in 7 years, the eclipse is back in the North America... 2024 I will be somewhere to see it again... don't know yet where I will be, but I know it will be worth the trip. Start planning now people!
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