We drove into downtown Nashville and surprisingly found a great parking spot right next to the area we wanted to visit. As soon as we stepped out of the car, music surrounded us.

And Ava surrounded the downtown statues. She has no real idea who Elvis is. Only that her Nona is a huge fan. But don’t worry, I foresee a field trip to Graceland in the near future.

Our first stop of the day was to fill our bellies. Surprised? I didn’t think so. Today’s choice of the day was Jack’s Bar-B-Que in downtown Nashville.

Going into a restaurant while starving is a bad idea. What’s even worse is having Dan order on a super empty stomach. Look what he ordered for us. Four sides and two pounds to meat. TWO POUNDS. And of course we finished every last bit of this delicious goodness. We have the bellies to prove it.

Next, we hopped into our time-machine and ended up in ancient Greece. Hello there Parthenon! Just kidding. We don’t have a time-machine, much to Dan’s dismay. Nashville actually has a full-scale replica of the Parthenon as it would have looked in all it’s glory in Centennial Park.

They actually built a temporary replica for the 1897 Fair. It turned out to be such a hit that they rebuilt it in concrete and dubbed itself ‘Athens of the South’. Taking your toddler there is really cool… for a split second. She kept asking if giants live here.

Ava then had a much better idea.

Now this is more like it.

We didn’t know what to do with ourselves next. The Opry was closed due to flooding so we just headed back to the campground. As we drove off of the freeway, we noticed this little gem. Cooter’s!! Dan didn’t watch Dukes of Hazzard growing up (foreigner!) but I sure did. This place is a (free) museum and store. They had four General Lees, Daisy’s Jeep, Boss Hogg’s car, Cooter’s tow-truck and all kinds of crazy memorabilia.

As we walked into Cooter’s, we walked right into a Hazzard County celebrity. That’s right. Cletus Hogg!!!! Yup, I was a little excited. And Ava? She likes policemen because they take bad boys to jail.

At the back of the museum, they had a bright yellow room dedicated to the famous Sun Records. We actually spent most of our time in this tiny room. Ava danced on the stage, Mila crawled around, and Dan and I watched a super good documentary about all these fellows on the wall.

Right next door to Cooter’s is the “World Famous” Nashville Palace. This is where many country stars have performed or visited over the years and the starting point of Randy Travis and Alan Jackson’s careers. It was such a nice night that we sat outside, ordered some food and drinks and enjoyed the beautiful Nashville night.

The entire place is tagged up with names of those who have visited and we were no different.

Today was one of the most memorable days on our trip so far. Not only because Nashville is an awesome city but also because Ava was on fire. She danced her heart out in front of the band the entire time we were there. The singer had a hard time holding it together while Ava was dancing. I have NO IDEA from where she got these dance moves. I SWEAR. The only things she watches are Disney movies so I guess I am pointing my finger at you Cinderella. Afterwards, I asked her where she learned all those dance moves. She just shurgged her shoulders and told me it was a magic dress. LOL.

Here she is in all her glory.

the end,
marlene

Mila, soon you will be able to join us on our binge across America. I promise.

Today, we are headed into the town of Asheville again and getting lunch at the very popular local restaurant called Tupelo Honey Cafe. It is so popular, our estimated wait time when we got there was 75 minutes!

Well, we have nothing but time. We went next door and did some shopping and bought Ava this little recorder and came back to wait in the rear of the restaurant.

Although we were told the wait would be 75 minutes, we were sat down at a nice table on the front patio in no longer than 45.

Asheville comes across as being a sort of a hippie town. Hippie here is used in the best sense of the word: Worldly, environmentally conscious and friendly. Although there are also some of the 1960 hippie aspects of Asheville as well. For example, Octopus Garden, a store with 4 separate locations across town, is what you would call a ‘head shop’. Hand blown glass ‘vases’, designer flavored tobacco and tie dye shirts are the kind of stuff you would find there.

What does that have to do with Tupelo Honey Cafe you ask? Well, you can buy a bumper sticker sporting the restaurants 3 letter initials right at the cashier. THC. I don’t know the origin of the name but it works for this great eatery in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina.

The food arrived shortly and it was well worth the wait. I like to use bacon as an indicator of how seriously a restaurant takes its food. Look at theirs, perfectly fried with just the right amount of curl in it. It’s even the fancy thick-cut, applewood smoked variety with cracked peppers in it. Can you believe Ava is not yet a fan of bacon!?!? Well, we happily took it off of her hands.

Here is Marlene’s shrimp and grits. Almost looks too good to eat.

My pulled pork sandwich with coleslaw and sweet potato fries were so good that it did not last long on these giant yellow plates. We were so stuffed we didn’t get to order their ‘special brownies’ for dessert

We stuffed ourselves and headed back to the campsite to spend another afternoon relaxing before heading out tomorrow into Tennessee.

Don’t worry, we made sure Ava waited her half hour before going swimming.

over and out,
dan

Mrs. Wilkes is a home-style restaurant that has been run by the same family since 1943. Sema Wilkes started working here at the boarding house to make meals for the residents which included her husband who was staying here at the time. The southern home-style food became a big hit with the people of Savannah and people soon began lining up at the front door to sit down at the tables for 10 with strangers to savor her amazing fried chicken, BBQ pork, collard greens and all the traditional fixings you would expect.

If you are looking to order off of a menu, you will be sorely disappointed to wait in this line to find out how the food is served here.

Even though we got here before it opened at 11AM, we had to wait nearly an hour to get inside for our lunch. Apparently there are tours that get first dibs each day and get to go in through a separate entrance just before it opens.

When we finally got to go in, we were led to a table in the back room with all of the food already served at our table along with a tall glass of sweet tea.

At $18 a person, it’s not exactly cheap but I assure you it is worth every penny. Even though Mrs. Wilkes passed away in 2002, the family still runs the restaurant. They no longer use recipes to make the delicious food since it has become second nature to them. They just now how to make to food good. I am sure it has something to do with a heavy hand with the butter.

Even though there are 10 people at each table, it is very unlikely that you will run out of food. As you sit down, you can start spooning food from whatever plate is in front of you and pass it along to your neighbor as you go. By the time all of the courses have gone around, you will barely be able to see the plate that is under that heaping pile. And believe me when I say this, it doesn’t get better than this.

Don’t take our word for it, ask your own president if Mrs. Wilkes is worth the wait. However I think he probably didn’t do much waiting in that line. One of the fringe benefits for being president of the United States.

Stuffed with fried chicken, sweet potatoes and banana pudding, we headed out for some more house tours in Savannah. The weather today took a dramatic shift as compared to yesterday. It has cooled down significantly which is much welcomed by us. In fact it started to rain quite heavily towards the end of the day and we were glad to have our umbrellas in the car.

While doing some research last night about places to see, we read about some of the more popular home tours. One of them was the Mercer house. The Mercer house was the home featured in the 1997 Clint Eastwood movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

If you have seen the movie, you know that it is based on a real account of a murder case that happened in the study of this house. I have not seen the movie so I didn’t really know what to expect. Aside from the murder depicted in the movie, there is suppose to have been another death at this house of a young child who fell off of the second floor balcony and was impaled by the street side railing.

Hopefully that is not why this post is missing the spear on the top.

The Mercer home is still privately owned by the family of Jim Williams who was the main character of the movie portrayed by actor Kevin Spacey. The upstairs is used by the family so the tour does not include that portion. The tour guide told us it was because the stairs are too steep and it was for our safety that we don’t go up there. I guess when you charge $18 per person on a tour, you gotta make up some excuse for only showing people 4 rooms and a garden.

In the carriage house is a nice little gift shop you can browse around in before the start of the tour. I think maybe they had been expecting our visit.

Because otherwise why would they have this book on display?

And this one!?!? That can’t be a coincidence. They must be loyal readers of Mali Mish

After walking around in the rain seeing a few more squares, we decided that it was time to get dry and get back to Mali Mish.

When we got back, we started to notice that Skidaway Island State Park was starting to be home to an increasing number of Prevost buses. If you are not familiar with Prevosts, they are highend buses that are used for many luxury class A RVs that cost well over $1 million a pop. It is rare to see just one of them at a campground let alone a whole fleet of them. Turns out that these millionaire travelers had planned a rally here starting this Wednesday which is probably the reason why we were only able to get 3 nights when we got here yesterday.

OK, time for Ava to get some work done on her Barbie computer to pay the bills!

over and out,
dan

As soon as we walked into Mickey’s Backyard BBQ, we got to meet Goofy, Chip and Dale. Nice heel pose, Dan.

Then we were handed lemonade and the kids we allowed to create sidewalk art and play drums while we waited for Mickey to finish cooking our meal.

Dinner is ready!!! On our way into the outdoor dining area, they were handing out beers instead of lemonade. How about that! The food was decent. The beer was Bud Light. And they had all you can eat ice cream too. And no, no one got drunk from what I can tell. We all had kids to watch. Duh!

Before we knew it, the mouse himself came out and the kids went nuts.

All the kids were allowed to join them on the dance floor. Ava was one of the first kids on the dance floor and super excited. But then a million other kids also showed up and she got a little intimidated.

See the black and pink ears on the bottom the picture? That’s as close as Ava got to Minnie Mouse.

Ava doesn’t like crowds and didn’t understand why the other kids won’t move out the way and share Minnie with her.

But don’t worry. Dada Dan was there to save the day! It sorta felt we were crashing a wedding reception.

So the moral of the today’s story is… if your kid is shy, it probably isn’t the best idea to shell out a nice chunk of change on this BBQ. Even with the lure of free alcohol. Ava spent most of the time outside, walking on walls, playing hide-n-go-seek, and screaming ‘you can’t caaaaatch me!’.

To make sure we covered all the free stuff that the campground had to offer, we put the kids into their pajamas and headed out to the beach to wait for the water electric parade.

And it was super cheesy but super awesome at the same time. Yup, that is possible. It was as close as I was going to come to see the electric parade that Disneyland canceled many moons ago. Besides this, the Magic Kingdom did also still have the Hall of Presidents and Country Bear Jamboree which were also gone from Disneyland.

Good night, little one. I hope you loved every second of this place.

the end,
marlene

Pecan Grove RV Park is in the heart of Austin, Texas. It is definitely a dying breed of RV Parks located right in the shadows of the Austin skyline. There were a couple of other RV parks near Pecan Grove that have already sold out to developers which many believe the owners of Pecan Grove will soon follow suit.

One of the unique characteristics of Pecan Grove is the unusually high number of Airstreams on their property. The only other time we see this many Airstreams in one place is if there is a rally going on. (By the way, that IS real snow you see on the grass there in Austin, Texas.)

Pecan Grove is a mixture of full-time residents with a handful of transients like ourselves and most people are very protective of their beloved RV park. Just as I walked around taking pictures of all the Airstreams in park, I was approached several times by both management and residents about what I was doing.

Apparently its in-city location invites lots of lookie-loos who like to cruise through the park for good reasons or bad.

This gentleman with half of his Dodge pickup hanging out the driveway was especially sensitive of having pictures taken of his trailer. He poked his head out of his door asking if I needed any help as I was standing across the way snapping a pictures for the blog.

As we drove around Austin, we quickly learned that the Airstream obsession does not stop at Pecan Grove. Apparently the entire city if Austin is under some type of Wally Byam voodoo spell.

Just around the corner there is a sno cone shop in an Airstream.

Down the street from us is a pet adoption shop in an Airstream.

Across the street from that is actually a law firm in an Airstream.

Couple blocks away from the law firm we have a donut shop in an Airstream.

And of course there is the famous hey cupcake bakery in an Airstream.

Just when we thought there couldn’t be any more doughy goodness made inside the silver bullet, we came across crepes in an Airstream.

Our last night in Austin, we patronized a restaurant called the Shady Grove within walking distance from Pecan Grove RV Park. Of course, aside from having a couple of Airstreams in the outdoor seating area, they also feature a very popular ‘Airstream Happy Hour’.

Cheers!

over and out,
dan