Day 22 Summer 2011 Road Trip

Nothing much to tell you about today.  Karen did our laundry, I got caught up on the blogs and uploading photos to Flickr.  I have tomorrows route loaded into the GPS and we will leave in the morning heading for Pigeon Forge Tennessee.  

Karen went outside to practice with the camera some more.  She doesn’t like to eat at McDonalds but I see that she likes to take photos of the one near us.

  

This is a trumpet vine.

 

Our hotel.

 

And a rainbow after a brief shower late in the afternoon.

  

To see all of the photos from today you can click on this link to our FLICKR site.

Day 21 Summer 2011 Road Trip

Well our friends Peter and Janette packed up last night and sometime early this morning, before we awoke,  they headed back to their home in Midland. 

Karen and I got a bit spoiled while they were travelling with us because they would always get to the breakfast room before us and have a table already with 2 chairs for us to sit down at.  This morning Karen and I had to fend for ourselves and had to wait a bit for a table to free up that we could sit at.  We had a great time all four of us and I look forward to future vacations that we can travel together.

Karen and I decided that we should go in search of some road side attractions today, so with our trusty GPS and my new smart phone, we took off.

There is a great website called Roadside America.  It is a guide to weird, quirky and off beat roadside attractions.  There is a smart phone app that lets you know if you are near one of the attractions and it includes a map, a description and a place where you tick off that you have visited the attraction.

The first one near us is this Pink Elephant with a Martini Glass.  Someone needs to give this poor guy a new coat of paint.



Can you see all the hydro wires in that photo.. of course you can.  Now with Karen’s magic photo editing program, voila… they disappear.   The photo is so much better without all the wires.



Our next roadside attraction is this “muffler man” Indian.   These are commonly referred to as muffler men statues and got that name because they often held full sized car mufflers as advertisements for muffler shops.  Sometimes they held tires or other items relevant to the business they were standing in front of.  They are typically 20 feet tall and made of fiberglass.  You can read about the origins and history of these “muffler men”.



Once again Karen worked her magic to make the pole and the wires disappear.  Pretty neat.



Our third roadside attraction is another Pink Elephant..



Then there was this Airplane Wing Sundial.  Good thing I have my new smart phone to tell me what time it is, I couldn’t make any sense of this sundials shadow.

  

To see all of the photos that we took today, you can click on the link to our FLICKR site.

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.