Nashville Skyline

In an hour or so we'll leave Nashville and head North. The last few days have been fantastic though. We left Denver on Wednesday morning and drove east through Kansas and Missouri before stopping for the night at a campground outside of St. Louis. We arrived late and the gate was shut but thankfully someone with the gate code arrived and we followed them in. Here's something I learned about life in the south: The cicadas are loud. Like jet-taking-off loud. Hunter and I slept next to each other on the grass and I had to raise my voice so he could hear me. I thought they'd be too loud for me to get to sleep, but no. It was the humidity and the biting bugs that kept me awake.
On Thursday we spent the morning and afternoon at The City Museum in St. Louis. It's one of the sweetest places I've ever been. Someone (I clearly don't know the story too well) salvaged all kinds of things from around St. Louis as buildings were torn down or remodeled. There's everything from sculptures to a huge bank vault, to conveyor belt rollers, to tiny cogs from machines. They then crammed it all into an old warehouse. The cool thing is that instead of looking at the stuff you play on it. You can climb on everything and there are tunnels and ladders and secret passages everywhere. It's like a five story jungle gym for kids and adults. There are slides made from industrial chutes, some planes you can crawl through 4 stories off the ground, and a school bus hanging off the edge of the roof. We stayed there over three hours and left because we were tired, not because we had explored everything. It's a very inspiring example of preserving a city's history and making it something that people want to experience, something that enriches the city in a new and vibrant way.
Thursday evening we arrived in Nashville. On Friday Hunter showed us around and then we had dinner with his family. On Saturday Hunter flew home to Bellingham and Kim and Anna and I spent the day in Downtown Nashville. Today we went to church and now we're heading from Mammoth Caves in Kentucky.
Two thoughts for you:
1. Hunter's family is awesome. If you ever get a chance to stay with them, I highly suggest it. Brandon and Pace and Afton were great hosts for us. They're fun and relaxed and were genuinely stoked we were there. Hunter's mom Jane made an incredible meal for us all on Friday night. Southern hospitality extended itself to Hunter's dad offering to give me a hair cut, which he did.
2. Nashville is genuinely into country music. Maybe that shouldn't have surprised me, but I feel like walking around Seattle, you aren't overwhelmed by coffee and computers. But here there are billboards and signs everywhere for the latest country music artist or concert. And on Broadway the bars all had live honky-tonk bands going full speed. I was laughing because if that music came on the radio I'd pull something trying to change the station so fast but sitting in Robert's listening to the band play and just watching the people in the bar and on the street we was loving every second of it.
We'll be in Kentucky the next two days and then arrive in DC on Tuesday. Thanks for all your phone calls and prayers and thanks for reading.