Road Trip Day 1 & 2 - Nashville

I am going to try to blog my mini-road trip in the style of my friend Nancy who is on a far more intense road trip, so here are our first two days (http://nancysexperientiallearning.wordpress.com/)

Day 1 (Monday) we (me, my middle sister Stephanie and my brother) drove from Maryland to Nashville. We started at Dunkin Donuts, where I tried the black pepper bacon sandwich because #vacation. Then we drove for a long time, stopped at a Cracker Barrel for lunch as is Scheerer family vacation tradition, and then drove for a long time and ended up at Stephanie's friends house (Jack & Jess). They have a new-ish baby (nine months old) who we played with, and they fed us Tennessee barbecue (turkey and pulled pork) then took us to the Nashville overlook by their house to see the city skyline. Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos of the skyline but it was interesting hearing them talk about the growth of Nashville and the tall buildings on the skyline. The AT&T building is called "the batman building" because of how it looks - see below for references.

Lego Batman:  Building Batman: 

Day 2 (Tuesday) we went to The Frothy Monkey, a local chain of hipster coffee shops, with Jack. Jack is particular about coffee so his approval was a good sign. I got a blueberry espresso shot which was absolutely amazing, and then hilariously, me and my two siblings all independently ordered the same breakfast (California style eggs, AKA avocado toast). We then proceeded to the Johnny Cash Museum, my selected Nashville tourism stop (posing with my sister below).

The Cash museum was actually fascinating for me. My dad went through a Johnny Cash phase when the Walk the Line movie came out, so I was familiar with many of his hits, but it was interesting for me to learn about the man - not the movie version of him. I came away from the museum with a huge amount of respect for him as an artist. He had a 50 year career in music, is one of the only artists to have released records in all music mediums (records of varying width, tapes, CDs, and MP3s), had 48 hit singles (more than Michael Jackson, including his time as a part of the Jackson 5!) and was the youngest inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame. He pivoted his career from country music to rock and roll, had a hit TV show, hosted Saturday Night Live - there was a lot to learn about his career as an artist. But for my sister, the thing that stood out was his humanitarian efforts for prison reform, which was also interesting to learn about, and his financing of a movie about the life of Christ - the first of such films to be made on location in Israel.

One of the other things I loved was the below exhibit, which showed what I'm calling the June Carter/Johnny Cash engagement photos - they were taking a photo for the cover of their new album, and the outtakes of this photo shoot are on display. The photos are adorable!

One of the other things I noticed was the small exhibit about the producer who discovered Johnny Cash - Sam Phillips. He also discovered Elvis. They had a quote from him - "I have one real gift. That gift is to look another person in the eye and be able to tell if he has anything to contribute, and if he does, I have the additional gift to free him from whatever is restraining him" - which I really loved, because that's kind of my personal career goal - to be an enabler of the people with big ideas and big dreams, to be their supporter and the person that connects them with other people that can help them succeed - to be the link in a network, the manager that pushes you to achieve more. So I connected with Sam Phillips based on his tiny quote in the Cash museum.

 After the museum we went to the Nashville Parthenon, a life sized replica of the Greek temple.

In the same park I met some Tennessee famous suffragists, and power posed with them because #whynot.

Then we drove the second leg of our journey, from Nashville to Memphis. We passed through Jackson on the way and played the Johnny Cash "Jackson" hit duet on the way.

Once we arrived in Memphis, we went to the pool at my sister and brother in law's apartment complex, went to Costco to see what was different about the goods sold at the Tennessee Costco, and how it compared to at home. You know, typical Scheerer family weirdness. Then we had instant pot lamb for dinner, because my brother in law is very into the instant pot for cooking. Memphis tourism will start in earnest later this week - today was just family catch up time (which included board games with my sis and my bro in law).