Another birthday, a little Pilgrimage and a new (and muddy) South Star

Well, the man was pretty smart...

Saturday, September 8 - The birthday presents for Ashlee have started to arrive and first up was this hilarious little door mat that is very accurate in its forecasting of our little Letty Spaghetti, the backdoor escape artist! 

Thursday, September 12 - Happy Birthday from afar, Ashlee!!  While I was on the road for work in East Tennessee, Ashlee was in Austin, Texas, for work as well today for her birthday.   We have a weekend of birthday activities planned to make up for it however.   

Friday, September 13 - Ashlee's birthday extravaganza weekend started tonight with a drive down to Murfreesboro for the Canine and Cactus Mixer at the Wag it Better Dog Training and Boutique, co-hosted by the Classy Cactus Farm.  Along with a couple other friends, we had a fun time arranging our own dog-themed succulent planters and then hanging out with some cute and friendly small dogs that are up for adoption as well.  

1,700 pieces!!! Happy Birthday, Ashlee...and good luck!!! - love, Dudley

Saturday, September 21 - We attended the Duke at MTSU college football game this afternoon down in Murfreesboro with our friend, Tom, and his girlfriend, plus his brother and his wife.  We were definitely for D-U-K-E even though this wasn't basketball.  The game was actually halted due to lightning in the area in the 3rd quarter with a comfortable lead for Duke, so we skedaddled before the storm and rain got to us.  They eventually finished the game with Duke winning 45-17.  

Saturday, September 28 - After learning that our # 1 want-to-see artist, Gwen Stefani, was headlining at the new South Star Music Festival in Huntsville, Alabama, today, we decided to buy day-passes and see her show even though we already had Pilgrimage Festival two-day passes also this weekend.  We figured we could catch Day 2 at Pilgrimage on our way back.  Simple, right?  Not so fast says Mother Nature! 

The rainy remains of Hurricane Helene threatened both festivals with complete cancellation, but we monitored both of their social media pages to see if they were going to try and go through with them.  With no cancellations announced, we headed down to Huntsville today and met our friends, Emily and Bridgette, at a nice Hilton Garden Inn near the festival site where we would spend the night.  We found parking fairly easily, not realizing it was a helluva walk to the festival entrance, but we made it with rain continuing to spit and sprinkle down. 

We headed to the Supersonic Stage and caught a great day-opening set from 90's veteran rockers, The Gin Blossoms.  We decided to stay at this stage throughout the day since we were able to move up to the very front when the next act, Tom Morello (photo above), took the stage...and proceeded to blow the roof off of the place as well as our minds!  Holy crap!  This dude is phenomenal!  As a part of Rage Against the Machine, we now have his band at the top of our must-see-live list.  An amazing show!!  And his "fuck Trump" banner in the heart of Bama was awesome!! 

After a fun and entertaining set from the 90's divas, TLC (minus the L sadly), it was time finally for the big payoff, front row for Gwen herself in all her blonde bombshell glory (video above).  She put on a stunning 90-minute set full of energy covering songs from her solo days and with No Doubt.  A great day and night worth the rain, mud, and sore feet and legs.  

Sunday, September 29 - This is the remnants of "Hurricane Gwen" last night! That joke is in very bad taste to the shocking damage and death toll to our east with the powerful Hurricane Helene path.  Our thoughts are genuinely with them. And, yeah, sure, global warming is a myth.   This pic does give a good idea of what we had to slog through last night in the dark to get out of here from the front row.  Not surprisingly, the City of Huntsville cancelled the second day of shows here for safety reasons due to the poor conditions of the grounds in their park.  
(photo courtesy of the South Star Facebook page) 

We tried our best to carry out the Two Fest Weekend, but Mother Nature made it very hard.  We made it to this year's 10th Annual Pilgrimage Festival with no problems from Huntsville.  Getting in was fairly easy and we even got some free tasty food from the Hardee's tent, but then here came the non-forecasted and not-on-the-radar rain again!! Seriously??  WTF?? 

So, after a very entertaining set by new-to-us artist, Stephen Wilson, Jr., IN THE RAIN AGAIN, we made the tough executive decision to call it a very early day.  There was just no way we could stand for another six or so hours in even more possible rain.  Sorry, Better Than Ezra, NeedtoBreathe and Noah Kahan.  Maybe next time.  It was nice to get home and rest early.  

Tuesday, October 1 - Summer is over, but it's trying to hang on as best it can.  We are closing the pool this week for the season and that's just too sad of a picture to post, so this little beauty got the nod instead for hanging on as long as possible.  

Friday, October 4 - We attended a magic show and dinner at Cedar City Brewing tonight along with our friends, Kate and Curtis.   The food was good, and the two magicians from House of Cards in Nashville were great.  Ashlee even got called up to help with a trick!  

Saturday, October 5 - We attended the relaxing and lovely "Beautifica" show at the Adventure Science 360 Theater in Nashville tonight with and at the suggestion of our friends, Kate and Curtis.    We had a quick, but tasty, stop at Schulman's in East Nashville for dinner beforehand. 

Holy cutie-pies, Batman!!!  Our new fosters, three brothers named Frankie, Gordie and Jett, are just freaking adorable and oh so loving.  They definitely should be easy to convince someone to adopt them (all together maybe??)

Sunday, October 6 - We did a fun and interesting behind-the-scenes at the Nashville Zoo at Windmere today.  We even got to feed a giraffe!  This was a belated birthday present for Ashlee that we both really enjoyed.   Beforehand, we strolled around the rest of the zoo checking out the Komoto dragons, the rhinos, red river pigs and some beautiful azure macaws.  We even had a very tasty lunch at the zoo.  The behind-the-scenes tour was great.  It looked like you were going into Jurassic Park when we entered the giraffe's enormous habitat and state-of-the art barn.  

The Nashville Zoo actually has five total giraffes of which we saw all of them including this gang shot of four of them at one time.  Proceeds from our tours go directly to conservation efforts in Africa for these magnificent, shy but curious animals.