nashville!!! 3of4!

it was cold in knoxville, but not nashville cold:

we woke up early so that we could spend a few hours in nashville before heading to our next destination. it was a bummer because the city was sort of shut down due to the time of year and weather. the grand ole opry and the country music hall of fame were both closed.

water left in the car!

instead we went straight to centennial park where there is a full scale replica of the parthenon!

it was built for the tennessee centennial exposition in 1897.

athena.

this was all very interesting to me, as we had studied the parthenon and the sculptures on the pediment and frieze in deep detail in many of my classes. 

 

as you can see, it is not an exact replica. both long sides of the building were straight here, unlike the parthenon in athens. the greeks built the original parthenon using 'optical refinement' with curves to make the building look well balanced.

(i saw this little picture after our trip and immediately thought of our time in nashville)

we decided to go to the johnny cash museum because a. we like him and b. it was the only thing open! we loved learning about him and listening to his hit songs. my favorite part about the whole museum was the section where they had an american flag hanging with the lyrics to 'ragged old flag' along with a video of johnny reciting the lyrics. i had never heard this before, and i loved it so much. jon liked walking through the hallway where all of johnny's records were hung. that johnny was such a babe.

downtown nashville. 

i kept hoping we'd run into taylor swift or in the very least rayna james so i could tell her how pretty she is for an old lady.

does this give you an idea of how cold it was? the water fountain was frozen! i couldn't stand to look at the statues feet too closely because they were covered in ice and it made my own feet hurt!
nashville was a cute little city, i wish we could have spent more time there. maybe even on a warmer day…

my sister, lizziebeth, recommended we eat at the loveless cafe on our way out of nashville. we are so glad we did! the history of the cafe is so cool and the food was delicious. before we ordered they brought out hot biscuits with homemade preserves (four different choices!). they were soo good and so soft! we bought some preserves for our friends at church who taught our class of 5 year olds for almost a month while we were in utah and on our road trip, eek! if i could go back, i would have bought some for us too! it was yummy.

i loved the quaint atmosphere in the cafe. nashville was a highlight of our trip. it has a small town feel but is a big city with tons to see. we can't wait to go back.

our next stop was mephis, tennessee!! we looked on yelp to see where the best place to eat was and it sent us here-Gus's Fried Chicken. we weren't very hungry yet, but wanted to stop in memphis. all we got was fried chicken with fried pickles and we felt about as good as you'd expect we would after that meal. our waiter was a former marine who had been stationed at camp pendleton in SD. he was so kind and even offered to buy jon a beer "no homo". cutie jon politely declined because 'we have a drive ahead of us…' he was so cute though, it is such a small world!!! memphis was pretty scary and we worried about leaving our car around the corner from the restaurant while we ate. a few weeks later i talked to someone about that city and they informed me that it is a bit ghetto…we could tell by the broken windows and run down buildings. haha. as soon as we left memphis we crossed a bridge over the mississippi river into arkansas!!! it was so cool, i don't think either of us have ever crossed it before! i hadn't even seen the mississip!

Little Rock, Arkansas!! we had my dad google the best single thing to do in little rock and i think elvis's house was number one. it was late so we went with number 2: the big dam bridge. it is the longest pedestrian bridge in north america that "wasn't ever used by trains or motor vehicles" at 4,226 feet. we walked the whole way across and back, just to say we did! it was still so cold, but it was good to get out of the car and stretch our legs. was it pleasant? no, not really. it was actually very eerie. the dam with rushing water was so loud and violent. looking over the edge reminded me of the end of the new les miserables movie were the guy commits suicide. (if you haven't seen the movie or play or read the book, where have you been since 1862??) it was super creepy. we threw some change in, but i didn't make a real wish because i didn't want my wish to be sucked into the dam and tossed about. it just didn't feel right.
we really did have fun walking across and talking and laughing. it's so nice to be with jon without any worries about school or work or the distraction of technology. traveling with him is the funnest, we are always laughing.

we finally stopped for the night in Texarkana. a city that sits both in texas and arkansas and not a place i'd like to visit again. we made reservations for a room at La Quinta. we stopped at one and she said we were on the texas side of town and needed to be at the la quinta in arkansas. like we can tell the difference! we drove ACROSS THE STREET to the right la quinta! weirdest!

p.s. i put our christmas card up just a few weeks late..
here

new car + road trip 2of4!!!

we got to raleigh, nc at about 1:30am. at this point we'd been up for like 20 hours. we were staying at my friend jessi's house who i love so much!!!!!!!!!! we met when jon and her boyfriend at the time were in bootcamp and we've keep in touch ever since. she has visited us a few times because she is a flight attendant and can do things like that. i'd never been out to see her, so we planned our trip so that we could stop at her place. when we got there, she had a pilot friend sleeping on the couch and one in her room and had a blow up bed for us on the floor. by the time the pilots left at 6am, jon and i were sleeping on the hard ground with no air left in the mattress. i quickly got into bed with jessi while jon slept on the couch. 

 i know these are horrible out-the-window pictures, but raleigh is so cute!! who knew???? also, how dare you have such green grass in the dead of winter!!

 as you can see, we went to the flying biscuit cafe in the morning. i love being with jessi, she has such a positive outlook on life and she is theeee funniest! she is not lds and she grew up in nauvoo, a mormon town. she very kindly told us that we are her favorite mormon couple (eye roll). she followed up by saying, "no, i know a lot of mormon couples! i see them every once in awhile. when they ask me how i'm doing i say "good. still drinkin' and swearin'."" my goodness does that woman have a mouth on her, but it makes her that much funnier. i really did not want to say goodbye to her, but we had a long day ahead of us...

 here she blows!!! isn't it so cute!!! we stopped to get gas at this teeny tiny gas station where everyone knew each other but us. this is when i started to drive for the first time. it is such a smooth ride and gets up to 83 miles per hour quick! so quick that i didn't even see that cop with his radar! needless to say, that 45 minutes was the only time i drove the whole road trip and yeah. i do have a north carolina speeding ticket i still need to pay off.

our friend aaron is from asheville, NC so we decided to stop in and see his stomping grounds! it reminded me a lot of park city, ut with all the cute little shops and sub zero temperatures. he was so excited to see pictures we sent him. it was fun but would have been much better if he and ashton were there to show us around. we got four little meatballs from the mellow mushroom. (turns out we have one of these in san antonio too!)

 our next stop was the tomato head in knoxville, tn!!!!!! i can not explain to you how cold it was here. it was very difficult for me to pull my pants down (tmi?) to use the restroom and this is why:

ice. along the walls and floor in the bathroom.

knoxville was really cute, i'm glad we stopped there for a couple hours. the square was dead because the weather was so bad. while we were driving, we were getting text messages from family asking how we were doing because that part of the nation was experiencing arctic chills. there were signs all over telling people to stop driving and stay inside. luckily, all was well for us although we were very, very cold.

next stop, nashville!!