A short drive north from Huntsville brought us to Nashville, the biggest city on our trip so far. We stayed at the Cedars of Lebanon State Park about a half hour east of the city. Having arrived on Friday, we decided to go downtown that first night to experience the sights and sounds of South Broadway.
The street is lined with restaurants and bars — or honkeytonks in the local parlance — and even at 7 p.m. the sidewalks were buzzing with people. We parked in the City Library garage for $10, and followed the crowds.
Our first stop was Robert’s Western World, which we had read had a band playing mostly cover tunes. Neither of us are big country fans, so we were hoping for a band that played some classic rock and roll songs we would know. The band, Kelley’s Heroes, obliged playing a number of tunes before getting the crowd going with a rowdy rendition of Rocky Top.
Robert’s is also known for its Recession Special meal: a fried baloney sandwich, chips, a moon pie and a PBR for $6. Neither of us partook.
We also noticed a curious tradition there. Patrons brought their own bottle cozies, I suppose to keep their drinks cool on hot Nashville nights?
As the band leaned heavily into their country repertoire, we decided to check out some other bars on the strip. None of the bars there seem to have cover charges, so you can hop from one venue to another until you find some music you like. Many of the honkeytonks had multiple floors with different bands on each floor.
I’m not sure how much the bands get paid by the bar, but after every set they would walk through the bar with a tip jar (or bucket) to collect money. One band offered to play any song you wrote down on a $100 bill. That seemed like a much worse bargain than the baloney sandwich.
We spent the night belting out tunes, having a few drinks and mostly people watching.
The next day we drove up to Mammoth Cave National Park, about 90 minutes north from our campground. Although there are hiking trails on the surface, the big attraction is obviously the miles and miles of underground cave, none of which can be accessed without a tour guide. We opted for the historical tour ($20 per person) which enters through the “original” entrance to the cave.
There are lots of stories about how the cave was first “discovered” but those early discoverers found signs that Native Americans had used those caves for burial purposes. Several mummies were found inside the caves, and some were put on display by entrepreneurs or museums before people realized that was incredibly disrespectful. One of the first mummies discovered there, known as Fawn Hoof, was found in remarkable condition with her clothes intact. She eventually ended up at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. Her bones remain in the collection although our tour guide did not know whether the items she was buried with are also there.
Our tour started from the visitors center and down a paved walkway to the historic entrance to the cave. It’s really unfathomable how large the entrance and passageway are at the start of the cave. So far, about 400 miles of cave have been explored and mapped, and only about 14 miles are open the public. There’s through to be another 250 miles of cave still waiting to be explored. It’s the largest known cave system in the world.
The cave was once in private hands, and was first used to mine saltpeter, a key ingredient in making gunpowder, during the War of 1812. When the war ended, there were cheaper sources of saltpeter, so mining operations ceased. But word of the cave got out, and soon people were knocking on the doors of the owners asking for tours.
There were a number of entries into the cave, and owners got very competitive fighting for tourists. They would sent people out on the road, posing as police or other officials, telling people not to go to their competitor’s entrance, because it was closed or diseased.
Much of the saltpeter mining and early exploration was done by slaves. One slave in particular, Stephen Bishop, is credited with most of the early discoveries. Tours were done by oil lamp which, as our tour guide demonstrated for us, provides almost no light. Today the cave is lit with LED lights. At one stop, our guide turned off the lights and showed us how pitch black the cave was. Your eyes would never adjust.
The cave also has a series of river and lakes within it, and in those lakes live fish and shrimp that have no eyes.
The guides also made candles that they would sell to tourists so they could write their names on the ceiling of the cave. The temperatures in the cave remain at 54 degrees year-round, which help to preserve that smoke graffiti as well as the Native American artifacts found inside. Woven clothes and moccasins were found that looked like they had been left the day before.
The historic tour is about 2 hours long and covers about two miles of the cave. It traverses a narrow section known as Fat Man’s Misery and a low-ceiling section known as Tall Man’s Misery. Much of the path is paved with metal steps and handrails. Bridges span deep pits, including one known as the Bottomless Pit. Spoiler alert: It’s not.
While other tours focus on the stalagmites and stalactites, the historic tour doesn’t visit those sections. At the end, we had to climb a 200-foot metal tower to get back to the entrance and hike out.
We had hoped to do a hike in the park after our tour, but it was cold and rainy, so we ended up just driving back to the campground.
The following day, we drove out to Belle Meade, a historic plantation on the outskirts of Nashville that had once been a thriving thoroughbred farm. Visitors have the choice of two tours, one focusing on the mansion and another focusing on slave life. To us it seemed like a choice between wanting to revel in the legend of the south or to understand its dark side. We chose the latter.
Only one slave cabin still stands on the grounds, and it was actually brought from another plantation. But our tour guide told us it was similar to the ones that had stood there before. At its height, Belle Meade had 135 slaves onsite, and all lived in cabins within viewing distance of the main house. That way visitors could see the family’s wealth with their own eyes.
When the slaves were freed, less than half chose to keep working at the plantation for meager wages. Half of their wages were set aside, and given at Christmas time. That way owners could dock their wages for any transgressions they might have cooked up.
Our tour finished at 1:30 p.m., and we walked the grounds for another half hour.
We then tracked down a local park where we could eat our sandwiches in a picnic area. We contemplated hiking one of the park trails, but again it was too cold and windy to be enjoyable.
There’s lots more to do in Nashville, particularly if you’re a country music fan. We never made it to the Johnny Cash Museum or the Grand Ole Opry. I imagine the town would be a fun place to spend a weekend with a bunch of friends.
Days: 50
Miles Traveled: 7112
Next stop: Memphis
