So long Chattanooga... Hello Lynchburg and Nashville

Lauren and I love Chattanooga. It is a great town with big city attractions and appeal, but a small town feel. However, we cannot live any more of the rock and roll lifestyle.

The last three days have been awesome. When we got into town, Steve took us out for pizzas and beers and asked us what we were interested in. He hasn’t been to any of the tourist attractions except the aquarium, so he was no help in swaying our decisions. He did remind us about Riverbend, which we were going to ask him about anyway. Riverbend is a week long music festival held downtown featuring all kinds of rock and roll, jazz, and blues bands with five stages, one which is a very large barge stage that features the headline performer. A Riverbend pin is less than fifty bucks and grants you access all week. It really is great deal. A lot of people buy pins and pass them off when they have to work. Steve makes his own I think because he can. We met people who wore last year’s pins or really just walked in. After dinner we went out for beers at a local pub and eventually made it home.

The next day Lauren and I headed downtown for coffee and the aquarium. Chattanooga has the largest freshwater aquarium set up and has added an IMAX theater and another building with saltwater tanks. I was able to pet stingrays, hold butterflies, pet a sturgeon – that last one was a first, and see interesting tanks. For geeks like us the aquarium was a long trip so that left us only enough time to head across time to get pin-making supplies, stop in McKay’s used books for an hour, and find some white things at the thrift store next door to tye dye. Steve tye dyes on the side and is work is amazing. Lauren could have easily spent a lot more of time looking for books at McKay’s but I gave her a time limit and then we had to go. Surprisingly, I was just about done.

That evening we made our pins and found out that rubber cement is not the right adhesive material. I lost my pin before dinner – less than an hour after putting it on. We had some extras so I was covered. For dinner, Steve took us to the Terminal, a restaurant next to the Chattanooga Choo Choo. They serve local foods and make their own delicious brews. Lauren and I had a difficult time deciding what to order because it all sounded delicious. Steve again knew most of the servers and knew the couple sitting at the table next to us. After dinner, we stopped in Hair of the Dog to find Jen to give her some pins. She wasn’t there, but Steve’s pin came unglued while we were there. One of the bartenders sprayed it with spray-mount which essentially glued the pin to the pin back and to Steve’s shirt. We had a round of shots and walked on to go see if our fake pins would get us in to see Willie Nelson.

The gate people didn’t even look at us. I enjoyed the concert. We sat on a hill to the side where we could see both the stage and an inch tall Willie (heehee) on the stage as well as see a close-up on the two megatrons. Others complained about him being off time or off key, but the man is seventy years old and still a great performer. After the stage we went to check out the VIP sections (Steve was interesting in faking that too) and headed back to Hair of the Dog and then to CBC, a cigar and pool bar. We hung out with Steve’s friends who are all fun people, but after a while, it becomes apparent that I am not a hardcore rock and roller like these folks. We got home at 330.

The next morning Steve took us to Aretha Frankenstein’s, another fabulous local eatery, for breakfast. They are renowned for the pancakes, which are made with a grain mix milled just for them. I had three and could barely finish them because they are THICK. They are fantastic. After breakfast, Steve showed us around downtown. We walked across the world’s longest pedestrian bridge and did some window shopping in cute stores. Steve left us for a lunch date so we walked around a bit more, sampled Clumpy’s homemade ice cream, and headed for the International Towing and Recovery museum. The Towing Museum is one of a kind and is located in Chattanooga because the towing and recovery truck was invented there after one frustrated man and his 8 friends spent 12 hours hauling a vehicle out of the river. Towing is different than recovery because towing is just pulling a vehicle, and recovery is being able to haul a car out of a ditch or something. I thought the museum was funny – and it could break a Guinness record for the number of toy cars in one place – and all of those ‘toy cars’ are really toy tow trucks.

We headed back to Steve’s to re-glue pins with superglue and then back to Hair of the Dog to see if we won the tickets to Bonnaroo. Sadly, we did not win. And I am not about to shell out 200 bucks, though there are some acts I would love to see. We met some more of Steve’s friends at Lupi’s for pizza and then walked together to Riverbend. The reason we went to Lupi’s for dinner was because we met one of Steve’s friends who works there while eating breakfast at Aretha’s. And because of the mega veggie pizza and good beer.

The highlight of Riverbend this evening was actually not the headliner; it was a band on a side stage called the Emmet Nershi Band. All of them, and even Lauren, were excited for this band because Nershi was a founding member of the String Cheese Incident. None of this means anything to me. I loved it! There was a guitar, a bass, a banjo, and some other thing that I think was a mandolin. They just jammed. Turns out that one of the dudes is like the best picker in the country – he’s won three years in a row, and the Emmet guy is in some other famous band, and the banjo player won some awards recently too. Lauren said she was going to introduce me to some more jam bands via her ipod while we are on the road.

While jamming to Emmet Nershi, Lauren and I realized that they were serving Star Hill beers right next to the stage! Good beer at a festival – everywhere else in the entire festival was serving Budweiser so Steve and his buddies were stoked for good beer – particularly because they served IPA. Lauren and I mentioned to the servers that we were from where the beer was brewed and they pointed us over to the brewer. The couple was super friendly and were super excited to meet Lauren and I because of where we were from, and enjoyed meeting Jennifer and Steve because they were gushing about how great the IPA was and how much they loved being able to get good quality beer at Riverbend. They hooked us up with some light sticks, stickers, and guitar picks.

Lauren really wanted to see Train, the headliners for the evening, so we settled on the hill while everyone else continued on to another small stage to enjoy a tribute band of The Band. Train rocked too, but after Lauren heard a few of her favorite songs, we also went to check out The Band. It was pretty chill.

After the festival ended for the evening we went over to Tremont Tavern. Tremont Tavern is a smoke free establishment (hallelujah) that also serves good quality brews. They have over 120 beers on hand and if you try ninety of them, then you can earn your very own glass mug – which you get to drink out of whenever you come. They also served Star Hill brews. I think Steve could have stayed out longer, but Lauren and I were smoked. We cannot live his rock and roll lifestyle any longer. So we went home and went to bed.

We went to Aretha’s again for breakfast because the day before we were already deciding what on the menu we wanted to try. I had the biscuits and gravy – YUM. After breakfast we headed back to Steve’s for lessons in tye dye and an opportunity to look through his collection and choose a shirt! This took longer than I thought, but Steve is a great teacher and knows a lot about it. I also dried out the wet tent that I forgot that we stuffed in a bag two days ago. Oops… safely dried now. After the tye dye lesson we went to the Market to check out local arts and crafts, produce, and food.

After the market, Steve pointed us into the right direction and we got on the road. The highway took us into Georgia (for some cheap gas) and then back into Tennessee. We got off the highway to go to Lynchburg, Tennessee, home of Jack Daniels Whiskey. The information I had was very misleading because Lynchburg is nowhere near the highway and certainly farther than 15 miles.

The Jack Daniels distillery is cool. The visitor’s center has the history of Jack Daniels and how it is and has always been made, and how it became famous. Jack won a gold medal at the World’s Fair in St Louis against many large international distilleries. The whiskey is brewed from a mixture of corn, barley, and malt and then mellowed by running it through a sugar maple charcoal mix. Then the whiskey is aged in oak barrels. They only use the barrels once and then they are shipped out to places like Tabasco to be used again. Throughout the tour we were able to take whiffs of the whiskey making process, and believe me they are strong whiffs. You cannot however sample any of the whiskey because the distillery is located in a dry county. We could not even buy any JD today because it’s Sunday – and they don’t sell liquor in Tennessee on Sundays. Hilarious. So at the end of the tour after walking by 32,000 gallons of whiskey aging in barrels (in one of many warehouses), we sampled some lemonade. : )

How is the distillery in a dry county? Jack learned whiskey distilling from a preacher and used spring water from a local cave. Business boomed, and then prohibition. As soon as prohibition was lifted, Jack went back to distilling using his famous recipe. Later the county decided to become dry, and the distillery was closed for a bit before obtaining a special permit to manufacture, but not sell, Jack Daniel’s whiskey.

After the tour, we drove to the gift shop which is in historic Lynchburg in a quaint little square lined with shops and eateries and motorcycles. The Harley dealer is there and many folks ride there. There is a large motorcycle parking lot at JD and lots of motorcycle spaces around the square. The official gift shop has every Jack Daniel thing imaginable – even scented candles – except for kids’ things. Kids aren’t even allowed in that shop because the owners do not want to promote child consumption of alcohol. We didn’t poke around anywhere else because it was time to get on the road to meet our hosts in Nashville.

The hosts I arranged in Nashville bailed on us so Steve set us up with some folks he had couchsurfed with and who had couchsurfed with him. Imagine… Steve knowing someone somewhere… he knows everyone! They agreed to host us last minute and we are grateful.