From Vandyville to Rippavilla

Saturday, October 25, 2008 If you look up the definition of a perfect fall day in the dictionary, you will see a picture of yesterday as the weather was crisp and clear for the football game between Vandy and Duke in Nashville that we attended as well as the corn maze we conquered late last night at the Rippavilla Plantation in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Our allegiance was kind of torn at the game as we are both huge Duke basketball fans, but hoped that Vandy could continue their promising season and hopefully get a bowl berth with their sixth win. Throw in the fact that David Cutcliffe (of UT football coaching notoriety) is now the head coach at Duke increased the struggle of who to pull for. The game got off to a somewhat slow pace as the only score was a touchdown late in the second quarter by Duke. Unfortunately, the slow pace of the first half was not due to spectacular defense on either side but instead a series of mistakes and pretty poor play. The second half was much more lively and better executed as Vandy got on the board with a beautiful long touchdown strike and Duke pulled ahead again with a field goal. Late in the game Vandy got a chance to tie but missed a makeable field goal and the chance to win a sixth game will have to wait another week. Congrats to Duke and Coach Cutcliffe on a 4-3 record so far this season and their own chance at a possible bowl game invitation. Our seats were great and right on the 50-yard line on the visitor's side as promised by the ticket broker we bought them from. We will certainly use these guys again (VIPTICKETS.COM). Other highlights of the game were the food, the walk through the beautiful old neighborhoods that surround Vandy and Vandyville itself - a pregame tailgating party area that had a large turnout on such a beautiful day. After the game we headed toward Murfreesboro and stopped in the locally famous sports bar/restaurant, Toot's, to compare the taste of what we heard were "great fried pickles." Unfortunately, we beg to differ. We still give the nod to WOW Wingery in Mt. Juliet as the best. We did have a great little pumpkin-spiced beer on draught for dirt cheap prices. A few draughts later our friend, Emily, met us and we loaded up and headed down Hwy. 840 to Spring Hill to test our orienteering skills on the corn maze at Rippavilla Plantation. I guess you could say we had an a-MAZE-ing time. The maze was about an acre and consisted of 23 "check points" with a solar system theme. We found about half of them without the aide of a map, but gave up wondering (and wandering) around and resorted to the map to finish our quest. The night was brisk and clear but they were out of hot chocolate when we got done which was a bit of a bummer, but a Starbuck's in nearby Franklin did the trick without too much waiting. This was our first visit to the Rippavilla Plantation and we were really impressed. They have a lot of events going on there throughout the calendar year, so we hope to visit there again sometime in the near future.