Day 5

As you can see by the map location, we have drastically slowed down our pace, thankfully! We are getting to enjoy more and drive less. 

While heading to our next destination of Nashville, we happened upon a fun stop (it made us forget that we were actually wanting to stop for a milkshake). Casey Jones, the world's most famous (and selfless) train engineer's memorial lies right by Memphis! So, of course, picture moments arouse. Corey makes a great engineer...and wow...do they really have a caboose named after him? (or is that Donna playing with photoshop again...)

The drive from Memphis to Nashville was beautiful (as was the one to Knoxville). Greenery everywhere...lots of trees covering the rolling hills. Corey's "wows" even made Donna look up from the book she was reading aloud to Corey (yes...halfway through!). Today we had a fly-by tour of Nashville as we put only 1 hour's worth of money into our meter (guess you can tell we aren't big country fans!).  Nashville had one highlight for Donna—the printer's alley. No—not because they had nightclubs on that alley (we were there during lunch) but because printing holds a special place in her heart...awwww! A quote found after the fact was quite interesting about Nashville, "Without the Country Musical influences, Nashville could have possibly been known as the Printing Capitol of the World. As late as the 1960s, Nashville was home to over 36 Printing Companies and many other numerous businesses, whose roles were to support and supply the massive industry." (theprintersalley.com)Yes, there is something other than country music in this city! Yay!

After the one hour stay in Nashville, it was time to head to Knoxville. This city has a fun downtown area with historical buildings lining the streets (and of course new ones...as you can see by the picture).

We went to see the place where the World's Fair took place in 1982. (we just looked up to find out more about the World's Fair history...I didn't know that it still exists!) It had beautiful architecture...especially the structure created to represent the sun. We were able to go up into the bottom portion of the Sunsphere and look out to all of Knoxville. Interesting fact: the windows actually had 22-karat gold powder added to the glass so that it would have the correct coloring reflecting from them!

The rest of the evening in Knoxville we spent taking fun photos (with Corey's new amazing camera—Thanks Pop). Had a nice relaxing dinner (at 10:30pm...we are still acting as if we are on CA time!). And will soon have a nice time sleeping once this blog gets posted!