Tennessee
My first time in Tennessee I was suffering from severe lack of sleep and heat stroke, so, Erich and I took the opportunity to visit Kanya in Tennessee during her spring break. Kanya and I spent most of the three hour drive to Knoxville from Nashville gabbing while Erich tried to nap in the backseat.
Having stayed up until almost 2 am the night before (we were on East Coast time, our bodies weren’t), we didn’t get out of the house on our first full day until noon. In the car we started playing the “spot the Honda Civic game”. Though these cars maybe omni-present in California, they are a rare gem in Tennessee. Kanya had hardly seen one in seven months…for some reason we found three in 10 minutes. After stopping at Walgreen’s to get a pair of sunglasses (which I stupidly left at home), we had lunch, our first meal of the day at Krystal’s. It was here I discovered the Krystal corn pup. It sounds weird, but, no where, save the state fair, have I ever had a better corn dog.
Kanya at World's Fair Park
After lunch, Kanya then took us down to her school which she informed us was first built in 1789!! I didn’t even know Knoxville existed at that time, let alone was established enough to have a university. Nevertheless, that old charm was ever present on the campus which is built on a hill next to the Cumberland River with intricate brick buildings interspersed with new modern facilities. The most interesting was the building that houses Kanya’s office, a multi-story brick building, formally a dormitory, built into their massive football (coliseum style) stadium. After a quick stop off to see her office, we did a driving tour of the rest of the campus and headed into downtown Knoxville.
Scott and Erich in front of the Sunsphere
On day two of our trip, we head out towards the Appalachias and the North Carolina border (about an hour and half away). I had wanted to visit a place I discovered, Sylva, NC. Sylva is a small town (of 2500 people) nestled within the Blue Ridge Mountains. As we drove along the highway and took in the rural, southern towns the biggest things you notice about the South is that there are churches everywhere, the beat up Ford truck driving, plaid shirt wearing (real plaid, not the trendy plaid we wear in Cali), redneck man is not as much a stereotype as one might think, and some people prominently believe they are still living in the Confederacy.
County capital building in Sylva
After an ill advised excursion into the hidden city of Asheville, we took our exit towards Sylva. As we drove, Erich made the very observant remark that the mountains and sky were a haze of blue. Who knew? The Blue Ridge Mountains really are blue. In any case, we finally made it to Sylva, which is a quaint little city with a nice downtown, reminiscent of Nevada City and has a very interesting take on the convenience store. After taking my picture with the City of Sylva sign, we headed back home.
My family is so famous we have a city named after us.
A drive thru convenience store for late night beer runs.
 Downtown Nashville along the waterfront |
The next day we made the three hour drive back to Nashville which, for some reason, seemed much longer than the trip to Knoxville. Maybe we were just tired of the unchanging rural scenery. After navigating the bewildering streets of downtown Nashville (our yahoo map bared no resemblance to reality), Kanya dropped Erich and I off at our hotel where we were staying overnight. We settled in and went for a tour of the Tennessee capital. Mostly, I wanted to get pictures of the BellSouth Building (the “ Bat Building”), but, we too a walk along the main street where country (yuck!) was blaring out of each bar and restaurant, took a stroll along the riverfront and up through the main retail/commercial district to the state capital building and plaza. |
 Walking through downtown |
 The Tennessee State Capital building |
 The Bell South Building |
Downtown Nashville was quite cute and surprisingly dense with lots of old brick multistory buildings with what looked like a huge Greco-Roman style plaza being built near the capital building. Our tour, though, took less than an hour before we headed back to the hotel and spent the rest of the evening relaxing and watching Monk (a show Kanya turned us on to earlier in the week). The next day, we caught our shuttle-bus to the airport (at 6:30 in the morning!) and headed home.
A view from our hotel room, Nashville awakens in the early morning
return to vacation home