Day 20 Summer 2011 Road Trip

Nothing planned for us today except that this evening we will return to The Grand Ole Opry to see another show.

So we have time today to laze around and not do too much.  

I had heard or seen a commercial that Hardee’s makes their milk shakes from real ice cream, so I thought we should go there for lunch.  I don’t think we have ever been to a Hardee’s but Karen thinks we might have been to one, but doesn’t remember where.  If we have, I don’t remember, but I do have a craving for a good old fashioned “real ice cream” chocolate milk shake.

I fired up the Garmin GPS to search for the closest Hardee’s but there was something wrong.. the GPS was running off of its internal battery and not being powered by the DC cable.   I can’t pull out of the driveway without my trusty GPS up and running and it will surely die quickly on its internal battery.   I tested the power outlet with another device and confirmed that the outlet was working, so it had to be the fuse in the cable.   So back we went to the Radio Shack that helped us the other day by selling us the WiFi router.

Bradley, the store manager came to our rescue once again.  With his trusty tester, he determined that the fuse was fine and that the problem was the DC cable itself.  He had a universal cable that will work.  He told me that I didn’t really need a Garmin GPS if I had a smart phone like his, he uses his smart phone for navigation.  Of course my reply was that I do have a smart phone (Apple iPhone4) with navigation, however it is useless in the USA because of the data roaming charges.  I bought the best international data roaming plan that Bell Mobility offers and in 2 day after crossing the border, despite having the best plan, I had run up over $1500.00 in roaming charges, so I shut the iPhone off.

Bradley said that he would sell me a phone,  I said I didn’t think that was possible.  That in all my research into buying phones in the US, I was convinced that it was not possible because any time I tried to buy one, I had to sign a contract, provide a US Social Security Number, provide a US mailing address, provide a US Credit Card and provide a US bank account number… None of which I have.

I said I will buy one and I don’t mind paying if I can get one legally.  I just don’t want something black market, or some phone that is illegal and winds me up in trouble for owning it.   Bradley insisted this was perfectly legitimate and on the up and up.  It is a Samsung Galaxy Prevail on the Android - Boost Mobile network.  There is no contract to sign, no questions about citizenship or banking information.   You buy the phone and then for $50.00 per month, you have unlimited data, texting, internet, email, gps, camera and all the Android apps (which are similar to the iPhone apps)
 
When the month is up, I will receive an email a few days earlier, asking me if I want to renew for another month (which I will do) but if I do not renew, the phone shuts down until the next time we vacation in the USA  and then I will re-activate it again.

I logged onto the Boost Mobile website and loaded $50.00 into my account from my Canadian credit card and I now have a US Smart Phone with unlimited data usage.

I am in seventh heaven again… I now have a smart phone that I can use in the USA and I can load it up with travel apps and weather apps, and I can Twitter and Facebook and Foursquare and whatever else I can find to do, all on my new smart phone.  I just have to remember to shut it off completely before I cross back into Canada or I will be hit with roaming data charges again.

So we got the gps working again and I have a new toy to play with..  Now we can proceed to Hardee’s.  I will say that I enjoyed the burger and the chocolate shake, Karen had a strawberry shake.  We will put Hardee’s on our list of restaurant chains that we like.

We ate an early dinner and then got on the shuttle bus at the hotel to take us over to the Grand Ole Opry.  I had said that I wouldn’t need to take so many pictures because we had already taken lots of pictures the other night we were here… well I was wrong.. I took almost 200 photos.

Here are some of them.   Click on the performers names if you want to learn more about each performer.

 

Jim Ed Brown.

 

Jimmy C. Newman.

 

Connie Smith.

 

Matt Kennon.

 

Little Jimmy Dickens.   Little Jimmy is 90 years young.

 

Jesse McReynolds and his Virginia Boys Band.   Jesse is 82 years young and he sure knows how to play a mandolin.  I have included a video I found on You Tube.

 

Jesse McReynolds.

Diamond Rio.

 

Larry Gatlin.

 

Jeannie Seeley.   She sang part of her song in duet with Larry Gatlin.

 

Monte Warden.

 

John Conlee.

 

Ray Pillow.

 

And last, but not least…    Josh Turner.

 


The ladies sure love this guy… they are all crowded around the stage.

 

The first song Josh sang tonight was All Over Me.  At The Grand Ole Opry, you can take as many photos as you want, but it is illegal to make a video any of the performers.  So here is a video for All Over Me that I found on You Tube.

Josh Turner–All Over Me.

The next song he sang was As Fast As I Could from his newest album.

Josh Turner–As Fast as I Could.

For the third song tonight Josh sang the first song he recorded.  Long Black Train.. here is the music video for that song.

Josh Turner–Long Black Train.

Now I would have bet money that he would have sang Would You Go With Me, but he didn’t so here for your listening enjoyment is my favourite Josh Turner song.

Josh Turner–Would you Go With Me.

There you have another evening out with us at The Grand Ole Opry.  It has been a lot of fun attending the shows this week, and I know that we will come back to Nashville soon to see more of our favourite stars of country music.

To see all the photos that I took today, you know the drill.. press on this link to our FLICKR site.

Day 17 Summer 2011 Road Trip

A big day today, and an early to rise day.  The alarm went off at 7am, breakfast at 7:45am and then we were picked up at 8:30 am at the front doors of the hotel to go on our Homes of the Stars tour around Nashville.

We saw several dozen homes along the tour, too many to put them all on the blog, so here are just a few.  The rest you will find on our FLICKR site.

The Tennessee Governors Mansion.



This was Minnie Pearls home when she was alive.



Ronnie Milsap’s home.



Ok, so these aren’t that interesting are they… I mean, what can you really see…   I think they should call this tour “The Gates, Fences and Trees of the Stars Tour”  Because you are really not seeing much of the houses.  Here are a few more.

The late Web Pierce’s house.



Here is a good one…   Martina McBride’s Volkswagen Beetle.   She is home, lets go and ring the bell.



Little Jimmy Dicken’s house, out the opposite side out the window of the tour bus.



Garth Brooks and Trish Yearwood’s home.



Dolly Parton’s house.



Here at Kellie Pickler’s house we actually got to see her Grandfather, he waved while he was working at putting down some new sod.



Now this next residence was the most visible of all on the tour.  Taylor Swift’s penthouse.  Is that her waving to us?

 

We arrived back at our hotel and had some lunch.  We thought we should go on a reconnaissance mission to scope out the situation for parking tonight and where the entrances are etc. at the Grand Ole Opry, so off we went.

It was actually a good idea to do this because the crowds were minimal and we got some unobstructed photos of the property.

  

  

It is hard to believe that back as recently as about a year ago, this was all under 10 feet of water.  The flooding in April 2010 got very little media coverage so in case you were unaware, here are a couple of “You Tube” videos to show you the damage and destruction.

Nashville Tennessee Flood of 2010

Nashville Tennessee Flood of 2010

I am surprised at how quickly everything has returned to normal.  I heard that The Opryland Gaylord Hotel complex was offered 50 million dollars from the insurance company, but they just went ahead and did the repairs themselves at a cost out of their pockets of 281 million dollars.  The Grand Ole Opry moved back to the Ryman Theater, not missing one show and did their own repairs and re-opened their doors several months after the floods destroyed everything inside.   The show must go on.

We went back to our hotel for a bit and then at 6pm we went back to the Opry to get into our seats.   Here are my first photo shots as we sat in our seats.

  

And then the curtain came up.

 

We have quite a line up of stars this evening.. Starting with John Conlee.

  

Now I don’t know who among you have ever been to the Grand Ole Opry, so you may or may not know this, but there is actually a radio show going on and in between the performers a radio announcer comes out and reads the radio commercials.  Then he will announce the next performer.  You can listen to The Grand Ole Opry on the radio, or through live streaming on the internet.

 

The next performer was Brett Eldridge.

  

Then Sunny Sweeney.

  

Steel Magnolia.

  

Mandy Barnett.  She sings a lot of Patsy Cline’s songs and is starring as Patsy Cline over at the Ryman Theater.

  

Ricky Skaggs and his band Kentucky Thunder.

  

Probably the most popular guy around the Opry these days is 90 year old “Little Jimmy Dickens”  I hope to have half his energy when I get to 90.

  

And the finale of the evening… Dierks Bentley.

  

  

When the show was over we had back stage passes.  We were told that it would be unlikely that the stars would hang around, but you never know.  So we did the tour, got to see the dressing rooms etc, but no stars.

  

When the Opry built this larger facility, in an effort to maintain continuity with the Opry's storied past, a large circle was cut from the floor of the Ryman stage and inlaid into the center of the new Opry stage.  Here is a photo of Brad Paisley and Little Jimmy Dickens laying that round piece into the stage.



And here we are on that same piece where so many stars have stood and performed.

 

Wow, what a great evening.  Live from the Grand Ole Opry… Bill and Karen.

We took over 300 photos today, so be sure to go to our FLICKR site to see them all.