I use this blog to try to document our travels. We have been able to visit many amazing places with incredible things to see and photograph.
Please take a look. Clicking on images in the posts will bring up a larger version. I try to insure that all images will contain embedded EXIF data.
On our route north and west away from the hot and humid South, we spent two nights at a small campground near the town of Bloomfield in south-east Iowa. I spent a little time looking for photographic subjects, but they were mostly small.
We spent several days in Nashville, Tennessee in order to attend a few bluegrass concerts. Our main focus was the music and all we took along were our iPhones, so there isn't any good photography, but we ended up with a couple compilations of video clips.
Two of the concerts were at the historic Ryman auditorium in downtown Nashville.
We saw many of these pedal-powered bars in downtown Nashville on weekend nights. They were mostly powered by alcohol in groups of women (bachelorette parties?).
The first concert was Della Mae followed by the SteelDrivers, at the Ryman.
We don't have any images or video for posting.
Our next concert was The Earls of Leicester at the Country Music Hall of Fame Theater.
Here is a compilation of clips from that concert.
Our last concert was Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder at the Ryman.
Here is another compilation of clips from that concert.
No, not illicit music played in some questionable bar, but rather bluegrass music played 333 feet below the surface at Cumberland Caverns near McMinnville, Tennessee. These caverns have hosted a series of concerts named "Bluegrass Underground" since 2008. Many of the top bluegrass performers have appeared in this venue. We finally were able to attend a performance on July 9, 2016. For this performance, two groups played, The Molly Tuttle Band and The Boxcars.
Waiting to get into the venue
This is a real limestone cave with stalactites, stalagmites and even a waterfall.
But how many caverns have a large crystal chandelier?
Cumberland Caverns Volcano Room, home of the Bluegrass Underground series
They even have a "merchandise" table.
The Molly Tuttle Band
Adam Steffey of the Boxcars playing as guest mandolin player for one song
We've been spending some time in Manchester, Tennessee. We decided that it would be interesting to tour the Jack Daniels Distillery in nearby Lynchburg, Tennessee.
Before taking the tour, we had reservations for lunch at Miss Mary Bobo's Boarding House Restaurant in Lynchburg. This location was a boarding house started in 1908, but now owned and operated by the Jack Daniels Corporation. The restaurant serves family style meals in several dining rooms where people are seated together around large tables.
One of the dining rooms
The distillery is celebrating its 150th year of operation.
Because of the possible presence of alcohol fumes in many of the production areas, photography was often not allowed. Therefore, most of the images were taken outside.
The Visitor's Center
The limestone cave that supplies the iron-free water used to make Jack Daniels whiskey
The office used by Jack Daniels
Various stops on the tour
One of the small older aging warehouses
The whiskey is typically aged 4 to 6 years before tasters decide that barrels are ready to be blended for the final product. The charred oak barrels are only used for Jack Daniels once and are then sold for other uses, including being sent to Scotland for Scotch production.
After Piney Grove campground, we spent a week at Reelfoot Lake State Park in northwestern Tennessee. Reelfoot Lake is a shallow lake which filled a depression created by the large New Madrid Earthquakes in 1811-12.
There were several ducks with ducklings at the edge of the lake.
After our visit to the Tiffin Service Center, we spent several days relaxing at the Piney Grove CoE campground on Bay Springs Lake in northeastern Mississippi. I had recently received a new Canon DSLR camera body that I needed to get familiar with,
so here are just some images from near our campground.
We found that this old tree stump showed the tenacity of living things.
