Nashville

Donald and I were invited to join Ally, Kim, Matt and Lisa in Nashville for the first weekend in May. My parents came up on Friday and we left Saturday morning around 10 am.  Just before leaving, I hopped into the truck and Donald immediately handed me his sunglasses and said, "I'm gonna need you to work on these." 

I say, "Do you have any of the lens wipes?" 

"No, I'm all out." 

So I jump out of the truck, run inside and open the hall closet and grab a handful thinking we may need them and also, to re-stock his supply in his truck. As I'm running back out of the door, my hand slam-full of wipe, square shaped individually wrapped things, it hits me. I glance up at my dad and he has this look of shock (horror, perhaps?) on his face. I say, "These are wipes for sunglasses, by the way....not condoms!" 

His response, "Yeah, I was about to say, 'Have a good time.'" Bahahaha!

Everyone stayed at a Best Western in West Nashville. We took an Uber to 3 Crow in 5 Points and our driver, Jadon had the most amazing high top hair do! He'd been working on that one for a while!

We sat by the window so we could people watch. Let me tell you-it was good. I had a few beers, sort of, I was sipping on those Cripsin Blackberry Pear Ciders. Nice and refreshing, and not much hit of beer, so I enjoyed it. We all dined on a few orders of fries with cheese, bacon & jalapenos, then went next door a little while later for something more substantial.  

We Uber'ed back to the hotel for some downtime and to freshen up, then Uber'ed to Crying Wolf. We hung there for the majority of the night. It was really laid back and chill.

Drunken cleavage pose for Ally

Not sure what's going on below...impatiently waiting on something I suppose.

Then Ally used my cheeks as a blotter for her lipstick....

....And had to make them match.

The bar had a photo booth so of course we partook. 

We left CW and walked to some other bar which was soooooo smokey we could hardly stand it. The other place didn't allow smoking inside which was lovely. We decided to leave just after arriving, but Donald had already ordered us drinks. So the girls helped me finish mine and we hauled ass out of there. We then walked down to 5 Points back into 3 Crow and hung there until it was basically closing time. 

When we left 3 Crow earlier in the day we noticed a food truck about a block down from it. It was named "I Dream of Weenie." We said we would go back later for pictures. So we did.

In my drunken state, I thought it'd be a good idea to put my leg up on the pole and do some sexy pose or something I suppose. Ally may have done something similar and maybe I was trying to follow suit? I don't know. But during my stripper pole moment, I lost my balance and fell onto my right shoulder-hard. My reflexes never kicked in for me to break my fall. But luckily I wasn't really hurt and in typical drunken Steph fashion, I thought it was hilarious and laid on the ground for a while crying in laughter. Ally wasn't far away snapping pictures and crying in laughter as well. 

The plan, from the moment we looked out our hotel window at 1:00 pm earlier that day and saw the sign for White Castle across the street, was to eat at White Castle at whatever time we came strolling in that morning. We were dropped off at the hotel and didn't even go inside. We all just started walking towards the glow of the lights for White Castle. But the damn place was closed! And their light was on! In my opinion, if you aren't open, then your sign shouldn't be on. I may have thrown around some colorful words in that moment. So instead of "Steph and Donald and the gang go to White Castle", it was "We all ate at Waffle House." And of course, Waffle House is never disappointing and always there for us in Georgia, but we wanted something we couldn't get in Georgia. We wanted White Castle dammit! But enough bitching. We all piled into a booth and chowed down. Pictured below is me not leaving the booth until every.single.speck.of.food is consumed. Everyone else is up paying. 

We stopped by Ally and Lisa's room and chatted for a little while, then headed up to our room to pass out at some ridiculous hour.

The next morning we discovered we weren't too far from Hattie B's Hot Chicken. So we decided to drive by and check out the place. Tons of people were lined up outside. We kept driving. We went up and down Music Row and rode through Centennial Park and by the Parthenon. We planned to try a few other Hot Chicken type place in Franklin instead of Nashville, but then found out on the way there that they weren't open on Sundays. The drive to Franklin was spectacular though. So many huge mansions with long, winding driveways and sprawling yards, pastures really encapsulated by fences and fancy gates.

We stopped at a local restaurant in Franklin named Quinn's. It wasn't too crowded and the menu looked good. Donald ordered a hot chicken salad and I got mac and cheese with mushrooms and broccoli and bacon or chicken. I don't remember. We sat at the bar and as soon as we ordered the bartender told us it was going to be a while. Turns out they were extremely short-staffed. It took nearly an hour for our food but once it arrived it was fantastic. That was seriously one of the best bowls of macaroni and cheese I've ever had. 

The bad thing was while we're hanging out waiting on our food, we had no idea a line of bad storms were on the way. We only got on the interstate for less than 20 minutes and pulled over at a rest stop because the rain was so heavy and hard. There was also construction on 75 in North Georgia and the back up was for miles so we knew we wanted to avoid that area. So we ended up taking back roads for the majority of the trip home. It was very pretty. We saw tons of barns and pastures, lots of front porch swings. I spotted a silo or something similarly narrow where someone had spray painted: 

I

Love
Kim

She 

Is

The

Best

We drove through a town in the Northeastern part of Alabama called Mentone. It looked like the cutest, quaintest little mountain town. It was home to many Christian boys and girls camps. We commented we'd like to actually visit it one weekend.

Then we entered the Northwestern part of Georgia through Cloudland (not to be confused with Cloudland Canyon SP). It wasn't the VERY NW part, but pretty close. Neither one of us had ever been up way so we were happy to visit a part of the state we'd never been in. We drove through Summerville, Armuchee, Rome, Aragon and Rockmart, all places we'd nevre been before.

One major problem during our tri-state road trip was the line of storms moving at nearly the same speed we were. And the line wasn't a straight one. We'd get ahead of it going east, but then need to drive south again and get back in it. It rained the.entire.time.we.drove.  

Since I couldn't get White Castle the night before, we decided to swing by Krystal's in Hiram for a healthy and nutritious bag of Krystal burgers. I think we went with the bag of 8, maybe 12. That's all we ordered, but whatever the number we didn't end up finishing them all.

The drive from Nashville to home ended up taking 7 1/2 hours as opposed to  4 the day before! We were definitely ready to be home, see our girl and lie down. From the time we checked out of the hotel at 11:00 am and jumped into the truck, we ended up being in the truck for 10+ hours when we finally arrived home at 9:30 pm. But Donald and I enjoyed each other's company and luckily didn't get sleepy. And, despite the ridiculous amount of rain we encountered, had a lovely, scenic drive.