Go Cards! Nashville. Entering the Smokys.

While in St. Louis, we met two of Bryan's gradeschool friends and went to my first ever professional baseball game! It was a very exciting game (so I am told - as I didn't honestly find it all that exciting) - it went into the 13th inning! We finally left at the top of the 13th, thinking it was over because the other team scored. We found out the next day that the Cards ended up winning - right after we left. Good for them :)


The next day we headed to Nashville. We stopped in a NO cover bar and listened to a quite good band and had some beers. Fun! Nashville was just as I had remembered it - music coming out of EVERY door you walk by. Bars galore. I think it is a fun place and nice to revisit. Sadly, I couldn't find the other bars I had gone to with Tim on my first road trip... our favorite human jukebox was no where to be found :(



nashville art

We next headed to Gatlinburg, the EXTREMELY touristy town outside of the north entrance of the Great Smoky Mountains. There was sooo much traffic. It was insane. I have never seen a place as touristy as this! They had everything you could possibly imagine - from Ripley's Believe it or Not, to ghost tours, to minigolf, to ski lifts... just everything. We went in to the park - and I learned that this is the MOST visited National Park in the country. Everyone was there.

We hiked to Clingman's Dome and saw rolling mountains covered in clouds. We then went on a 3 mile hike to the Ice Water Appalachian Trail shelter! Bryan was so excited to be on the AT agiain! The hike was great and we arrived to the shelter just after the sunset. There were quite a few people there. We met some folks celebrating their one year anniversary with a road trip. They were from Texas and warned us that eastern Texas will be like breathing through a straw because it is so hot and humid! Yikes. We went to bed in the shelter, which was very nice. The ranger claimed it would be rodent free, but that was not the case. I coudl hear scurrying about throughout the night. Luckily I never saw or felt any mice though!

Link to Kentucky and Tennessee Pictures:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=9gc0q893.9kqd2qsj&Uy=-j0kc6s&Ux=1