Another busy month for us as we wind down a fun Summer of 2014
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| Saturday, August 2 - It was another luxurious overnight stay at The Inn of Fontanel for us as geared up for The Soulshine Tour making a final stop at The Woods Amphitheater at Fontanel starring some of our favorite musical performers including Trevor Hall, Brett Dennen, and Michael Franti and Spearhead. We had the larger Guest House Lower Suite booked this time and it was awesome. |
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| Did we mention it was luxurious? Ashlee claims this is the greatest bathtub she's ever soaked in. |
We were having such a great time hanging out at the inn with our friends Chris and Tarryn, who also came up for the show, that we missed
Trevor Hall's quick opening set, but he
made several appearances throughout the rest of the show at least.
Brett Dennen was up next and we caught most of his set. He seemed a little "spirited" in his always-enjoyable performance, some of which is captured in the
video below from our great vantage point near the stage.
Soja was the third band to play and we enjoyed their unique reggae sound for the first time live.
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| Michael Franti and his band, Spearhead, put on another dynamite show to close out the evening with appearances from all the previous performers as well. Tarryn even got a big hug from him after the show. He's the best about hanging out after a performance. |
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| Saturday, August 9 - Monday, August 11: We continued the "staycation of luxury" theme the following weekend with our third visit to Evins Mill Resort over in nearby Smithville, TN. We got to enjoy a buy-one, get-one night deal in their newest addition, the Solstice building. Our room was large and lovely and the entire unit is nestled in among the trees. Totally peaceful. We even had the whole building to ourselves on Sunday night since no other guests were staying there. |
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| Our choice of revisiting Evins Mill this particular weekend was two-fold since Calfkiller Brewing Company in nearby Sparta was having a tasting and pairing with the Evins Mill dinner on Saturday night. We tried all four of their offerings and were impressed by each. Dinner was delicious and abundant, as usual, as was the fare on Sunday night. The breakfasts that are included with the room rate are awesome too as was the box lunches they provided us on Sunday. Worth every penny and I bet we come back again if given the chance. |
OK, make the reason we came back to Evins Mill this weekend three-fold. We also wanted a chance to swim beneath Carmac Falls which is located on the resort's property. We hadn't had an opportunity to do so during over previous two visits, but we got our chance on Sunday afternoon with warm, sunny weather and, amazingly, in complete privacy also. Can't beat that! The short video below shows Ashlee daring to take a dip even after the fact she spied a snake in the water a bit earlier. Fear...conquered...for the most part.
Friday, August 22 - We had dinner at
Watermark Restaurant tonight to take advantage of some good pricing for
Nashville Restaurant Week. Our friends, Danny and Brenda, joined us and we had a fancy and delicious three-course dinner for 30 buck each. We decided to go see
Guardians of the Galaxy in
IMAX after dinner. All of us but Ashlee had seen it before. In fact, it was the 3rd time for me and Brenda. It's not exactly Ashlee's preferred type of flick, but she was a good sport and wound up enjoying it actually.
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| Saturday, August 23- We got up this morning and headed over to LP Field to have our picture taken and turned into a banner for this season's "Hall of Fans." We got this honor by actually winning four Tennessee Titans season tickets. Plus, they gave us a nice bag of Titans' swag as well. Big thanks to the Tennessee Titans organization for this generous prize! We even took the elevator to the wrong floor going out of the stadium and wound up getting a couple goofy pictures in the team's on-field vehicles. What a hoot! |
We spent the afternoon cooling off from the high temps at
Nashville Shores Water Park. This was my first time there, but Ashlee's been a few times this summer and even got a season pass because she likes it so much. We had a ball riding all the big water slides and lazing about in their Lazy River. What a great place right in our own backyard.
Sunday, August 24 - We stole the term "
Sunday, Funday" from a hilarious new TV sit-com called "You're the Worst" and applied it to a full day out and about doing pretty much nothing of any real value other than...you guessed it...having fun. We started with brunch at
M.L, Rose's in downtown Nashville. We then moseyed south to where we had a bottle of wine on the covered porch with a nice breeze at
Arrington Vineyards. Next, it was a drink at the now-TV-(in)famous dive bar over in Murfreesboro,
MT Bottles and Cans. We had an early dinner at
O'Possums Irish Pub in Murfreesboro with our friend, Emily. The food was excellent. We finished up with a drink at the rather underwhelming
Brew U also in Murfreesboro. Overall, a very good Sunday, Funday!
Saturday, October 4th - We attended the first-ever Mac and Cheese Festival here in Nashville today with our friends, Wayne and Mike on the grounds of the Opryland Hotel and Resort. We definitely got full on some tasty mac-and-cheese varieties, but were glad we got in with a BOGO deal on the expensive tickets since the lines were pretty long for the small samples at each of the participant booths, and they ran out of the booze that was included in the price. It was also a little "cheesy" in terms of entertainment with a dated (albeit spot-on) heavy metal cover band. Afterwards, we all attended a showing of the psychological thriller, "Gone Girl" at the Opry Mills Theaters next door which was pretty good.
Thursday, October 9 - Tonight we attended the season-opener for the Nashville Predators vs. the Ottawa Senators with our friends, Chris and Tarryn. It was an exciting come from behind 3-2 win and the first ever for new head coach, Pete Laviolette.
LP
