Aboard the MS American Symphony, we cruising on the Cumberland River. Our cabin is nice, we’ve had lunch, and we’ve tried on our life jackets, aka flotation devices.
On our way from hotel to ship we had a city tour and heard about plans to hold a Super Bowl here in 2-3 years, saw the honky-tonk section down by the riverfront, and saw the outside of Dolly Parton’s new hotel which opened a couple of weeks after she died. As noted before, Nashville is booming, growth is happening left and right.
Before it became the country music capital, and eventually the music capital of our great land, Nashville was known as “the Athens of the South.” This was because several colleges and universities chose this as their location.
Athens of the South is why there is a cast-concrete replica of the Parthenon in a city park. Neither the location nor the copy is anywhere near as spectacular as the marble original in Athens, but it is fun to see nevertheless.
Local weather is warmish, a/c indoors is welcome as this is humidity country. I remarked on how silky the air feels, something we don’t get in either WY or NV. If you look at a map of greater Nashville, you see rivers and lakes sprinkled liberally across the landscape. No one experiences shortages of potable water hereabouts.
One geographical feature seen in this region that I never see in the mountain states or west is layers of whitish limestone. Out our way you see sandstone in colors that range from tan to yellow to auburn to almost dark red, but limestone is rare. Here in the high south limestone is the standard stuff, seen in riverbanks and road cuts.
