Hot night in Music City

We are at the Elks lodge in Madison, Tennessee (map), a suburb of Nashville. We hadn't remembered it until we were already in the driveway, but we'd visited this lodge three years ago, under similar circumstances. By which I mean it was hot and we were looking for a power outlet.

If we had even a glimmer of a memory that we had been here once, I could have checked the blog, and read there that even though the guide now says this place has a 30-amp outlet, it really just has a couple of 15-amp outlets on shared circuits, put in by amateur electricians. This is, after all, the reason I write so much detail here in the blog, for our own reference later. Not to bore you, as you may at times suspect.

Back then the temperature was about ten degrees warmer, and unbeknown to us until the next day we were also having some wiring issues with the air conditioning, and we quickly determined the ratty-looking 15-amp outlet was not going to keep us cool overnight, and so we bailed out immediately. This time we figured 15 amps would get us by for a day, and we paid the $10 "donation." The outlets are so poorly wired the grounds are open, and the bird's nest of Romex^® is so long that we're only getting 99 volts here at the bus after our 50', 10-gauge cord. But that's enough to keep one air conditioner running full time, and we've been mostly comfortable. The lodge says they're putting in some real RV spaces with pedestals this year.

We came here so we could have dinner in downtown Nashville at the City Club, atop the Fourth and Church Tower. Dinner was excellent as usual, and after dessert, with temperatures just a few degrees cooler after sunset, we rode the scooters around Printers Alley, along the waterfront, and back up 2nd. On a warm Thursday night, the streets were packed with tourists and the more popular clubs had lines out on the sidewalks. We were a bit overdressed for the weather, or we might have strolled a bit. On a side note, I fail to understand why anyone would travel all the way from wherever to downtown Nashville, and then eat at Hooters or Joe's Crab Shack and go clubbing at the Hard Rock, when there are so many original restaurants and clubs here. To each her own, I suppose.

Yesterday's drive was quite pleasant, along mostly country roads. We left Columbus on state route 58, and zig-zagged our way into Tennessee on 339, 97, 94, and 121. That put us on US-79 in the middle of Kentucky Lake, and there is a lovely state park right there at the bridge called Paris Landing. We drove in to look at it, and filed it away for a future stay. We wanted to make Nashville last night, and state parks here tend to get crowded coming into a summer weekend. The park had a nice marina, too, so perhaps we will return someday in a boat.

Today we spent three hours on Red Cross conference calls, part of our ongoing curriculum development work. Now that it is past 1pm, the lone air conditioner is struggling to keep up, running as it is on 83% voltage. We'll be leaving in a couple of hours for the short drive to Christiana, south of Murfreesboro, to visit our friends there.