A visit to the Nashville TN State Capitol Building…

From Audubon State Park in Kentucky, our next stop was Nashville about 160 miles south, a rather lengthy drive for us! We are finding it a bit more difficult to find neat little campgrounds in this part of the country so we made our way down 41 and onto Interstate 24. I usually try to avoid Interstates but we lost a part on our brake-buddy system and are trying to avoid any extreme elevations which Interstates often do. We pulled into a park called Nashville Country RV Resort about 15 minutes north of Nashville in the city of Millersville.

Sporting awards such as Tennessee's ARVC Campground of the Year 2011-2012 and the National ARVC Small Park of the Year 2011-2012 we booked a week hoping to simply relax, enjoy some downtime and plan the rest of our route south for the winter. When we checked in we were invited to a catered dinner and/or free live music held at the campground on the following Thursday evening.

     

We backed into our site which looked nice enough even though it was a bit tight.  We purposefully rented the larger site and can’t imagine being in one of the smaller ones. I guess we might feel this way since lately we have been staying in city and state run parks and have forgotten what it is like being in a private park (getting us ready for Florida!). With all the advertised  accolades for this park I must admit we were expecting a better setup here. Not only are the sites quite tight, there is lot of road noise along the busy highway adjacent to the park.  Sharon was happy with having full hookups, the pool and the games the park offered (shuffleboard and cornhole) .

After setting up our site and relaxing a while we decided to take a drive into Nashville for a visit and to get our bearings once again in this city. Seeing the “Batman Tower” building is a sure sign that downtown Nashville is nearby. We have been here several times before but the last few times we were in Nashville it is was to watch our daughter Katie playing fast pitch softball for her school Campbell University. We still miss all the fun we had following her around her senior year and all the camaraderie we enjoyed with all the softball parents. However, our new friends we have met while RV’ing now seem to have happily filled that void.

Our past visits have been on weekends and we never had the opportunity to tour Nashville's historic capitol building as it is closed on weekends.  So we decided to head straight over to Bicentennial park.  The park is large with many artful tributes to the State of Tennessee.  The park is well used by locals as we saw joggers, walkers, people enjoying an outdoor lunch as well as tourists and kids on class field trips.  The capitol building is perched on a hill overlooking the park so after enjoying the park we trekked up the steep hill to see the capitol.  After passing through security the guard guided us to the information desk where we could choose either a free guided tour or follow a self guided tour utilizing free brochures. 

 

We chose the self guided tour so that we could go at our own pace.  The tour was very enjoyable and the restoration was beautiful.  Gaslight chandeliers made in the 1800’s had been carefully updated to electricity retaining the the craftsmanship and charm.  All materials from the building are from Tennessee and so proud were the architect and building commissioner that they both, per their wishes, are entombed in the building!  One of our favorite anecdotes described on the tour was of a slavery argument between government officials that erupted in gunfire which dislodged a big chunk from the handrail in the main stairway.  Tennessee's Quite a colorful history this building offered and we were very glad we took this weekday to enjoy the park and Tennessee's impressive and beautiful Capitol Building.

Sharon even snapped a photo of me (at left) where I was arguing to the Tennessee Senate to pass a bill granting free fishing licenses to all full time RV’ers….

Back at the RV park we will take time to relax and plan some revisits to a few favorite spots here in Nashville.  The week will surely pass quickly so I had better start planning the route south…