Moving on from Weatherford, Texas we made a couple of short stops at the Texarkana Elk’s Lodge and a return visit to the North Little Rock KOA. From there we shot up to the Bowling Green KOA then our Kentucky “home” at Three Creeks Campground in the town of Corinth. It’s been a freaky coincidence (or omen?) that we have been getting deluged with rain for a few days as we were on our way to view “the Ark”. I sure hope there is room for us, three down, thirty-seven to go…
The Ark Encounter is surely MASSIVE! For you secular heathens out there, The Ark Encounter is one of two very large attractions run by the organization Answers In Genesis, the other is the Creation Museum. The Ark is a life sized replica of Noah’s Ark as described in the Bible. It contains non-stop historical depictions/re-creations/stories of the biblical times leading up to and after the Great Flood. The whole “encounter” covers over 800 acres and besides “the boat”, it contains a zoo, zip-line stations, play areas for kids, petting zoo, virtual reality attraction, main auditorium for various presentations both live and video, and during this time of year they decorate for Christmas with massive quantities of lights, putting on a nighttime Christmas program. There are also the prerequisite food/snack stands, restaurant, and several gift shops for all your gnoshing/shopping pleasure. I’ll just leave it at that and let you gawk at the following photos, no captions…
With our Ark encounter completed, the rain morphed into snow on the day we raised jacks. I’m not real fond of the thought of driving in a snow storm, but we managed to drive out of the light flurries within the first hour. Our “Destination Alpha”? A return visit to the Grand Ole RV Resort on the north side of Nashville in the town of Goodlettsville. We originally planned a short stay and to get out before the forecasted “bomb cyclone” hit with it’s accompanying single digit & below zero high temperatures, but plan change #8,962 had us extend through Christmas Day and stick out those temperatures.
We have made several visits to Nashville over the years and have seen many of the sights, including the Christmas decor at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center, Cheekwood’s Mansion, The Hermitage, and many others, so we gave all those a pass this time. We did manage to find ourselves down in Marathon Village, so we paid the area a visit. The old car manufacturing complex is now a series of shops which includes the store for the TV show “American Pickers”. It was antique heaven for those who are into old stuff. The hallways were full of antique tools & equipment, I’ll jump out on a limb here and venture an opinion that a lot of it was car manufacturing related. Other shops included boutiques, music related “stuff”, all manner of souvenir knick-knacks, and even a couple of distilleries on the block with swag sales and tastings.
A foray down to Broadway was necessary to pay a visit to Famous Nashville, the highly touristy rooftop bar. We were thoroughly unimpressed immediately upon arrival, but the view from the roof was nice, looking down at the Cumberland River and across to the Titans’ stadium. Our search for lunch found us at the good ol’ reliable Hard Rock Cafe (basically next door to Famous). After stuffing my face with some pretty tasty pulled pork sammich, we walked it off to check in on some of the nearby touristy venues, like John Rich’s Redneck Riviera, Luke Bryan’s Luke’s 32 Bridge, Kid Rock’s Big Ass Honky Tonk, and Dierks Bentley’s Whiskey Row. The weather being what it was (COLD!) on that Thursday, the “crowds” were well thinned out.
The clock ran out on us and WHAMMO, we got slobber-knockered with the “bomb cyclone”. Woke up to below zero temps, EVERYTHING was frozen up. I learned from some fellow RVers some years ago that to keep the on-board hoses/pipes/etc. from freezing up in freezing temps, leave the wet bay interior light on over night. I did that, rolled up my water hose and used towels to blanket the whole reel. Alas, that no work in sub-zero temps. Solid as a rock. It is also fun when the electric/gas AC/heat pump units don’t operate on electric when temps are too extreme. So it was fire up the gas and let ‘er rip (glad I had a full LP tank). I broke out my little Big Heat electric 1500 watt space heater and set it up in my wet bay to thaw things out. It’s nice that I could plug it into the 20A power post outlet and not risk blowing out any of the MH plugs. It only took about 8 hours for water to be restored to the bus. So, here we are, waiting for Santa, icicles hanging off our eyebrows, with forecast temperatures “soaring” up into the 30-40’s on Monday, at which time we will be heading warp factor 8 south in search of a tiny bit more temperate weather.
Stay tuned for the next “adventure”, until next post…
