Nashville to Lexington

Day 5 of the Young & Stupid, YES! Road Trip:

Another beautiful day that this country provided our travel. We woke up and got ready for Nashville. Now Amy had been to Nashville before because it was where her sister either got married or had the bachelorette party or both, (I honestly can’t remember, I know there was a flood involved, but that doesn’t make me a bad friend) so she acted as our travel guide. I was surprised by how beautiful Nashville was – I thought it would be a bunch of barefoot hicks with guitars in wood shacks but it actually looks surprisingly like Austin. Nashville, the Country Music Capital, and Austin, the Live Music Capital, both have clean downtowns with modern architecture but seem to have very normal neighborhoods outside of downtown where people’s kids could play in the front yard.

We were on a mission: cowboy boots! Now you have to understand that Sam and Franco were trying to experience all that ‘Merica had to offer this summer. At camp, everyone had cowboy boots except the foreign boys (I had to borrow some to go horseback riding) because it was a camp founded on horseback riding and being an cowboy. Sam and Franco wanted a pair of real cowboy boots. Amy came to the rescue and took us to Boot ‘n More on Broadway where if you ‘buy 1 pair [you] get 2 free’! We each got a pair of boots, actually Franco got two, and Sam also got a cowboy hat that he wore all the time. The store cuts you a deal so that you aren’t missing out on their special. Still high off the leather boot fumes we decided to go a couple doors down to see Hatch Show Print, which began churning out posters in 1879 and basically is a famous graphic design and print shop. Trust me if you are an American that has been alive in the last 100 years, you’ve seen their stuff. I contemplated buying some of their posters so that I could hang them up in my apartment when I got home but I didn’t think they posters could last the trip. We didn’t actually have that much room in the car. I settled on a Hatch Show Print t-shirt and a key chain that I gave to Amy to replace the one I lost in Houston.We went next door to a charming old soda shop / sweet shop that also served lunch food. We indulged in some sandwich/soup/salad combos and discussed what are plans were for the rest of the day. The boys were dead set on going to the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum, Amy was leading and I was just along for the ride.

We needed to make a quick stop at a bank. The boys still hadn’t been able to cash their pay checks from camp. We figured out that the boys could just write their checks over to Amy and then Amy could cash them. Thankfully the cute redhead bank girl make this easy while the crazy woman in Houston, days early, seemed to make us think it was impossible. Finally the financial burden was lifted and we all felt free. We went to the Country Music Hall of Fame and did the museum thing. I’m not a big country music fan but I enjoyed it. I use to hate country music because it reminded me of small-town, ignorant, racist, sexist, hill-billies but now, because of my summer at camp in small-town Texas, it reminds me of the simple pleasure in life that are easily enjoyed while living in the country. I enjoyed looking at all the old pictures and memorabilia. As we were leaving Nashville everything got dark and it started to pour. This was not good. We had 11 hours to drive to DC and it was around 4pm.

I drove us out of town and into the mountains. It was beautiful. The shower let up just as the sun was setting around the mountains. The road was windy but it was kind of exciting. Once we hit Virginia we stopped to play around at the Welcome Center, one of our favorite road trip past times. Half way through the night Amy and I switched and she drove. While the boys dozed in and out of consciousness, Amy and I began to lose our minds from the driving. This peaked around 12am when we decided that we were not going to be able to make it to DC. Amy hated driving at night on these windy roads in the mountains so we pulled off the interstate, following signs for hotels that seemed to not exists. We later found out we were in Lexington, Virginia. There was a strange fog and the rural roads looked awesomely creepy. Amy mentioned that she was scared of ghosts so I came up with elaborate tales of the civil war ghosts that haunted this area that could and probably would show up and try to get us more lost. It was mostly the delirium of driving 8 hours in a row but Amy was getting freaked out. We saw a sign for Stonewall Jackson’s house but we were failing on finding some place to stay. Finally we saw signs of life and after checking with a couple of hotels we settled on one. Well there was no turning back, we just travel more than half way to New York City.

Wanna read Amy’s version of Nashville