Much music, fast cars and a little travel

Rob Thomas

Apr 22

Ryman Auditorium - Nashville, TN

Tuesday, April 22 - We saw a great SOLD OUT two-hour acoustic show by Rob Thomas at The Ryman with no opening act.  He did tons of hits including solo stuff as well as several Matchbox 20 songs and was even joined on stage by his band's lead guitarist (and Nashville resident), Kyle Cook, for a few choice cuts.  He did a great cover of  Jane's Addiction's "Jane Says" also.  Rob's definitely one of our favorite voices in music today. We had a terrific dinner beforehand at our new favorite sushi restaurant, O'Sake, over in the West End of Nashville.

(a short clip of part of a beautiful acoustic rendition of the Matchbox 20 hit,  "3 A.M.")

Friday, April 25 - We attended the Nashville Film Festival Closing Night screening of Lucky Them starring Toni Collete, the hilarious Thomas Haden Church, Oliver Platt and a surprisingly-cool cameo by Johnny Depp.  The director, Megan Griffiths, and co-writer, Emily Watchel, were there in person for the film's intro and a Q-and-A afterwards. It was a terrific film and a fun and interesting time.  Thanks to our friends, Danny and Brenda, for attending with us.

Tuesday, April 29 and Wednesday, April 30 - I tagged along on a work-oriented road-trip for Ashlee into her newest territory of Kentucky.  We visited Lexington, Louisville and Elizabethtown in our travels and sprinkled in a little fun along the way: 

We stopped at the Parkette Drive-In in Lexington for lunch.  This nostalgic place was featured on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives a few years back and it's a perfect representation of the show.  The double burger and tots were delicious!

We spent the night in Louisville at the beautiful and historic Seelbach Hotel located downtown.  It happened to be Derby Week so we ambled over to the Brown Hotel for one of their signature mint juleps. I varied mine up a little by asking the bartender to use Jack Daniels instead of bourbon.  He obliged...secretly.  It was great, by the way.   Part of the week-long Derby Festival was a charity poker tournament held aboard The Cinncinnati Queen paddle-wheeler boat which was docked downtown. Ashlee didn't play, but tagged along for the ride since the boat went out on the Ohio River for the first hour for a nice cruise.  The evening went long with me placing 30th out of over 200 people (no money, but a good run) and Ashlee stayed with me the entire time sipping libations and watching the antics.

The next morning before heading back south with a stop in Elizabethtown, but before we left Louisville we had breakfast at a new location of one of our favorite restaurants there called Wild Eggs.  The new downtown spot is beautiful and roomy and the food was just as good as we remembered.

Saturday May 3 - A while back we bought a couple Groupons for a NASCAR 3-lap shotgun ride-a-long at the Nashville Super Speedway.  It was perfect weather for it today.  Upon arrival, we bought an extra two laps for $20 each for some side-by-side racing that was a great bonus to the overall thrill of this 140-mph-average experience.  Thanks to our friend, Bridgette, for joining us as well.  At one point all three of us were on the track (video below).  

Here's a link to a short video shot by Bridgette's brother, Eddie, who we appreciate for sharing with us.  I am in # 11 and Ashlee is in # 48:

.http://youtu.be/gpM8RyxJTa4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpM8RyxJTa4&feature=youtu.be

Afterwards we headed on down to Murfreesboro to check out the fairly new Mayday Brewing Company and have a sampler of their beers along with some food-truck lunch from My Roots.  Today's menu was Mexican fare and it was delicious.

Sunday, May 4 - We took the kayaks out to Barton's Creek today, and we towed them for the first time in our new trailer that we bought at Tractor Supply recently.  It was a beautiful day for a paddle and it was so much easier to load and unload the boats!  We saw tons of wildlife, grabbed some rays and drank a few brewskies as well.  It was so easy and fun, we took the kayaks out again on Tuesday, May 6 and Thursday May 8.  Three times in one week!!  That's definitely a record for us!

Wednesday, May 7 - We caught an incredible live show from the band, Blue October at the  Exit/In tonight.  This group has quickly jumped up the ranks in terms of performers we want to see play live again and again.  They had two solid openers as well tonight with a strong acoustic set by Matthew Mayfield (great cover of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit") and a last-minute substitute for a band we like (Terraplane Sun) by the name of Zeale, an indie hip-hop artist
 with great on-stage energy.

(a few seconds of Blue October's  "Bleed Out" off the new album "Sway")

Saturday, May 10 - It's not the first time we've traveled to Chicago to see one of our favorite bands, Augustana, but it was the first time we saw two back-to-back shows from them in the same venue on the same day!  After the first show at The Double Door sold out quickly, they added a second earlier show and we said, "Hey, why not??"  It helped that our friends, Laurie and Derek, were going to the earlier show as well.  And much thanks to our friend, Wayne, for flying up with us today and going to both shows as well.  We all had a great dinner of New Haven-style pizza and some brews beforehand at the nearby Piece Pizza and Brewery which we had visited before during a Chicago food tour in this Wicker Park neighborhood a few years back.

(from Show # 1:  we had a great close-up view and here's a few seconds of lead singer, Dan Layus, on the piano with "Remember Me. ")

(from Show # 2:  a good ways back from the stage this time, but still a good view. A few seconds of "Steal Your Heart" with the whole band.)

Sunday, May 11:  Since it was Mother's Day, Ashlee got up early and flew back to Chattanooga early to see her mom.  Wayne and I goofed around in The Windy City the rest of the day before catching a late flight back to Nashville.

A birthday weekend in South Dakota and Wyoming

For my birthday this year, I picked a destination I have wanted to check off my bucket list for quite a while now.  We FINALLY found a decent airfare up to Rapid City, South Dakota, for a long weekend visit of the area including stops at Mt. Rushmore National Memorial, the Crazy Horse Memorial, Wind Cave National Park and Devils Tower National Monument over in nearby eastern Wyoming.

Thursday, April 17 - It was a beautiful late-afternoon flight out of Nashville on Delta Airlines that gave us this stunning view of downtown.  After connecting in Minneapolis, we landed in Rapid City late that evening.

Check out our $5-a-day upgrade!  The rental car company was out of full-size cars which is what we reserved, so they could give us a minivan and no extra charge or this sweet Infiniti QX80 SUV for five bucks more a day.  Easy decision!

Friday, April 18 - Pictures can't do it justice, folks.  Just go see it.  Simply amazing.  And the walking trail right around the bottom of the mountain offers tons of other breathtaking views from different perspectives.  As you can see, we got very lucky with weather for April in South Dakota.  It had snowed heavily here, just the previous week.

These beautiful mountain goats were grazing beside the road near Mt. Rushmore seemingly oblivious to the traffic.

We almost didn't stop at the Crazy Horse Memorial which is a long, long way from being finished, but glad we did.  It is quite an undertaking and an interesting story.  We also got a discounted fee to get in since it wasn't very busy.

Looking like fallen leaves on the ceiling, this is a very rare cave structure known as boxwork and 95% of it in the world is found here at Wind Cave National Park.  The hour-long tour we took was very interesting.

The buffalo weren't roaming much at Wind Cave National Park, but they sure were majestic.

Back in Rapid City, we had dinner and a huge sampler of beers at Firehouse Brewing.

Saturday, April 19 - We fueled up again the next morning for breakfast in Rapid City with a lot of locals at Tally's Silver Spoon.  That's my delicious order of migas (a Tex-Mex scramble of eggs, pepers, Chorizo sausage and potatoes over soft tortillas) in the foreground and Ashlee's bacon, over-easy eggs, hash browns and cobbler (yes, cobbler) in the back.

Did we mention it snowed the previous week here?  Well we found a large amount of the remnants of it despite 60-degree-plus temps as we hiked to Roughlock Falls in the beautiful Spearfish Canyon (an excellent scenic byway).

Roughlock Falls is a beauty.  It's about a mile hike off the main road and well worth the walk.

Back out on the Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway is Bridal Veil Falls as well.

It's the beginning of Big Sky Country out here and as we headed west into the eastern edge of Wyoming nothing stands bigger against that big sky than the awe-inspiring Devils Tower National Monument.  This is about 14 miles out.

Stunning, simply stunning.  Like Mt. Rushmore, this place is so worth an actual visit.  You will never grasp the size and scale of it from pictures.  You can hike all the way around its base, which we did.  And yes it's DEVILS Tower.  The apostrophe was omitted by mistake when the name was registered, so that is the correct spelling now.

See the climbers?  Several people were climbing the massive volcanic intrusion which must be quite the endeavor.

The park surrounding Devils Tower has a huge prairie dog town that you pass going in to the monolith's base.  These little guys are very active, not overly shy and a lot of fun to watch and listen to as they chatter among themselves.

Sunday, April 20 - Happy Birthday to me and Happy Easter as well !!  With our last day in this beautiful area, we focused on the Black Hills area south of Rapid City.  Our first destination was the incredible Iron Mountain Road with its 400 curves, 22 switchbacks and three "pig-tail bridges" in just a 17-mile stretch of Highway 16.    I never got a good picture of these amazing  and beautiful curved wooden bridges, but this shot from above of one of them (courtesy of Blackhillstravelblog.com) illustrates how they got their name and how cool they are to drive on.

While the Iron Mountain Road only has three tunnels, they are doozies (and narrow!!).

We even got to see the Rushmore boys again from this Iron Mountain vantage point.

We continued south from Iron Mountain through Custer State Park along the Needles Highway passing the amazing Cathedral Spires.  This granite pillars are huge and again this picture does them little justice vs. seeing them in person.

Looking like some distant alien planet, the area along Needles Highway is incredibly unique.

The Needles Eye formation along Needles Highway defies logic (and gravity).

My I-Phone navigation screen-shot here gives a good illustration of just how challenging it is to navigate down the curvy Needles Highway.  Ashlee did all the driving and did an excellent job.

We flew home late in the evening from the quiet little regional airport in Rapid City.  After thinking this might be a one-time place to visit, we could easily seeing ourselves coming back if the opportunity arises.  It's just too interesting and too beautiful not to want to see again.

Gettin' out of the HOUSE, a packed HOUSE, the Boat HOUSE, a little HOUSE and a great, big HOUSE by the beach

The early part of April 2014 had a few HOUSE-related experiences for us:

April 5 - We got out of the HOUSE and took a day hike at the new Cummins Falls State Park.  It's nice to know that our small contribution a few years back helped in making this place a reality and saving it from development.  We rewarded ourselves afterward with some ice cream at Cream City in Cookeville.

The HOUSE was SOLD OUT later that night for one of our favorite regional bands, The Dirty Guv'nahs at The Exit/In in Nashville.  It was a stop on their "Hearts on Fire Tour" in support of their latest record by the same name that we helped get made thanks to some contributions via Kickstarter (check the album credits if you don't believe us!!)  We had dinner at the always-good, Bosco's, beforehand with our friends, Danny and Wayne, who also attended the show with us.   Beside cuts off the great new record and many of the Guv's great older songs, they also did terrific covers of "Layla", "Are You Gonna Go My Way" and "Signed, Sealed, Delivered"

April 6 - We drove down to Chattanooga for the day to celebrate the 75th birthday of Ashlee's mom, Evelyn.   We had a great dinner with her at the Ichiban Japanese Steak House along with our niece, Ella.

April 7 - We became second HOUSE-owners today.  Before all the ooh-ing and ahh-ing starts, it's not that glamorous.  We had to buy a small, second house in our name for my sister, Melinda, to live in.  It's a long, frustrating story that doesn't belong in this blog.   But, we do feel fortunate to have gotten a pretty good deal on this decent, little foreclosure in Powell's Crossroads.  Thanks to Ashlee for spotting it on the Internet just a few days after it went up for sale because it wouldn't have stayed on the market long at the great price it was listed at, and thanks to our friend (and realtor), Mollie, for helping us close on it quickly and easily.  Afterwards, we took Evelyn out for another birthday meal and a sort-of celebration lunch for us at The Boat House in Chattanooga.  It was our first time eating there since it was The Sandbar Restaurant way back when and it was very good.    Thanks to all the April showers, we saw this beautiful waterfall on Hwy. 111 on the way home that evening.

April 12 -14 - We were invited down to the Florida Gulf Coast near Destin for a few days of  ocean and pool play.  The weather was pretty accommodating, so we gave it a go.

OK, so this HOUSE is a little nicer than the one in Powell's Crossroads.  Wow!  Nice job by Ashlee's sister, Paige, in procuring this beauty for the spring break week of her daughter, Ella.  With six bedrooms and seven baths, she had people coming and going all week like a little hotel.  Photo courtesy of:  http://rentals.fivestargulfrentals.com/la-brisa-vacation-rental

The house was just across the street from the beautiful sugar-white beaches of The Gulf.  The waves were nice and strong and the water was tolerable after a couple seconds of gasping.

Non-beach and pool time was occupied with good food and libations including a visit to the fairly-new Props Craft Brewery over in nearby Ft. Walton Beach and the beautiful Marina Cafe in Destin.  We tried to off-set some of those calories with some 4-mile walks in the beautiful beach-side community as well. 

OK, this is something new.  We had our picture taken by a professional photographer.  Ashlee hired the friend of a friend who lives in the area and does beach photography to get some family pictures on a beautiful evening while most of us where there.  This one of me and Ashlee is one of my favorites.  Photo courtesy of GwyneMark Photography.

OK, that's a great IPhone picture if I do say so myself.  And with these two beauties easily passing for models, maybe I should try and sell it?  That's Ashlee's second cousin, Alexis, who was celebrating her 16th birthday with a visit to the beach house and our niece, Ella, and their dolphin friend coming back from the beach store in the tiny little rental car I had.  To add to the hilarity, Ashlee was also in the back with them...and there was a just-as-big, blown-up shark in the trunk!!  Well, it's not like we were going to blow these massive things up ourselves!!  Good thing it was just a short drive back to the house because I doubt it's street-legal to have a dolphin hanging out of both side of the back of our car..even at the beach! Alexis and Ashlee had a large time riding these floats in the ocean.  I missed out since I had to fly back to Nashville that day for work.  Too bad.  Next time, dolphin, next time.

MARCHing toward Spring

Kind of a quiet (for us) month of March as we anxiously await spring to arrive.

 Editors note: unknowingly at the time, 
we also witnessed  the last game 
for the original Nashville predator i.e. the first draft pick 
of the franchise, David Legwand, 
who was traded to Detroit  the next day.

3/4/14 - We attended a Nashville Predators game tonight with our friends, Wayne and Wes vs. the Pittsburgh Penguins.   The big news was that our all-star goal-tender, Pekka Renne, was back on the ice for the first time this season after battling an infection that showed up after off-season surgery.  We lost this tough one at the end  by a margin of 3-1 after playing the Eastern Division leaders close for most of the game. Thanks to Wayne for the free tickets and food vouchers. 

3/6/14 - We attended another Preds game with Danny and Brenda vs. the St. Louis Blues. We had dinner at The Flying Saucer beforehand and walked from there to the game on a crisp, but clear evening in Music City.  Sadly, we lost 2-1 in another hard-fought game against the Western Division leaders this time. Could of used Legwand maybe?  We drowned our sorrows afterwards back at The Saucer.

3/8/14 - It was a very nice early spring day down in Chattanooga today and we went for a family visit and took a walk across the beautiful and historic Walnut Street Bridge.  We had a great dinner later that evening at Taco Mac.

Ashlee and our niece Ella high atop a hill in Renaissance Park in Chattanooga

Cool new outdoor artwork in Renaissance Park in Chattanooga.

March 9 - We started our Sunday with a delicious brunch at Chato Brasserie.  This is their " Big Island" special of ground beef and  fried rice covered in Shitaki mushroom sauce with a scrambled (per my call) egg on top.  Yummo!

 The beautiful weekend drew to a close as we headed back home from Chattanooga with a peaceful drive up good ol' Highway 111, a road we have traveled many, many times over the years.

March 16 - Another lazy weekend started with "Ashlee's Famous Bonnaroo Breakfast" of apple pancakes served up at home. The good eats continued later in the day as well with dinner at Pomodoro East (Nashville) with our friend, Wayne, and, Ashlee's sister, Paige, who was in town for business the next day.   Dessert at Jeni's Ice Cream is, of course, a must when in "East Nasty."