Nashville (Tennessee)

After leaving Rocktown we had a long way to go to get to the next bouldering spot (Hueco Tanks). We could have gone straight through Dallas, which would have been the shortest way, but also the most boring. Instead, we planned several stops and sights along the 1500 miles and moved the route a bit further north so that we could drive on historic Route 66 for a while.
The first stop was Nashville. The Music City. When we imagined this place back home, we thought of small music venues with some live bluegrass, folk and country artists. We searched for concerts from Germany, but couldn't find much, so we figured we'd just go somewhere and see if anyone was playing that night.
And then there is the real world...
We drove to Nashville and tried to find a parking space. It was crowded like hell. All the parking lots were full, people were walking across the streets, there were bright neon signs and loud party music everywhere. We finally found a spot, realized the fee was $45 for 4 hours and kept looking. In the end, we parked just outside downtown for only $25 for 6 hours...
Hungry as we were, we immediately went looking for a diner and found a nice one downtown. We had coffee and an omelet and enjoyed the quiet of the place, which was in stark contrast to the world outside the diner.
Nevertheless, we strolled through the downtown area, went into some cowboy shoe and hat stores, saw funny people on the street and found out that there was actually music everywhere. Just not like we imagined. Every single bar, club and pub had show bands playing music all day long. There seemed to be no difference between 11am and 9pm.
Most of the music we heard in the pubs was terrible and there were drunk people everywhere, so we decided to leave without a concert. But I really wanted to go to the Johnny Cash Museum and it was worth it. The museum was very well designed and composed. It had a lot of music, of course, but they also displayed artwork and lyrics by JC and showed a 20 minute movie collage of movie appearances! JC really played a lot of roles in several movies, TV shows and he even had a cameo in The Simpsons!
After the museum we happily left Nashville and continued our trip west until we reached a small campground halfway to Memphis.Read more