Saturday: Touring Opryland/Earplugs Please
Dear Diary,
woke up this morning about 8am. Was looking forward to seeing what breakfast would be like aftering seeing the waffle iron in the breakfast area last night. It was very nice, we got warm food like biscuts & gravy, sausage, and eggs. There were also bagels, cereal, waffles, but no fruit. We decided to take a Gray Line tour today. It was their "Grand Legends" tour, which included a Tour of the Grand Ole Opry House, Flat Boat Ride and Tour in Opryland Hotel, Country Music Wax Museum in Music Valley, and the Ernest Tubb Record Shop. I would come ’round our hotel at 1pm.
Until then, we decided to buy something to cook at the neighborhood grocery store. We had brought along my mother’s George Foreman grill so we wouldn’t be doomed to eating out all the time. My mother bought salmon and I bought some chicken. It was about 12:30pm when we made it back to the hotel room. We didn’t see a refrigerator so I went to the ice machine on the first floor (we are on the fifth) so I took the elevator down and got bags of ice to keep the meat cool. Just was it’s time to go I open one of the cabinets and there, lo & behold, is a refrigerator. So we had a good laugh and transported the food to the fridge. The phone then rang and the desk said that Grey Line tours was here. Our drivers name was BJ and he drove us to Music City to the Grey Line office to pay. We walked around for a half-hour first in this strip mall. A few doors down from Grey Line was an old-fashioned soda shop with hot dogs and haburgers and whatnot. I bought a root beer float for $3, and it was delicious since I haven’t had one in a while & the root beer came from a glass bottle.
As our tour began, the bus took us to Grand Ole Opry house.
http://www.opry.com/
We were joining a different tour company for a while as a woman explained a bit about the opry and the building. Then she showed us a 10 minute video about the show and how it became what it is today. I took this opportunity to get a few pictures in. Then we left the buiding and were ready for our boat ride…our INDOOR boat ride.
http://www.gaylordhotels.com/gaylordopryland/index.cfm
The Gaylord Opryland Resort is one of the biggest and most beautiful places I’ve been to. As we entered we heard thunder, and were glad we were inside. The whole inside atrium is covered in thick glass that can deflect rain, gusting winds, and even hail. As we were getting in there was a worker with a camera taking pictures of us. Of course it was to sell to us as we ended our ride. It was a pleasant enough ride and we rode by waterfalls with fish swimming around us. They have water spouts there that they can set to music for a show at night, so that kinda’ reminded me of Tower City’s fountain, only more showy. As we left the boat, the ceiling began leaking and small streams of water came down where we were departing to the shore. In the end we did buy a copy of the picture, for my mother said it was one of the better ones taken of me. At this point they let us have an hour to explore the whole place. We didn’t get to see everything, but we almost got left behind near the end. We got lost, and BJ said that if we weren’t there on time he wasn’t going to come in looking for us. So we made it eventually to the spot he dropped us off at and in about 5 minutes we saw him. He said he had already took everyone over to the next destination but was going to return anyway. So with a sigh of relief we headed over to the Country Music Wax Museum. It was okay, I’m just not really into country so I didn’t know many of the names, except maybe Elvis Presley and Dolly Parton. As we left that museum our tour time was through and we went back to our hotel.
As we walked to the room we decided on cooking the food right away. My mother made both my chicken and her salmon with the grill after I set it up. I think mine was overdone, but I ate it anyway, along with a twice-baked potato and strawberries. As evening came, we weren’t sure what to do next. Earlier that day at another Walgreens close to us(yes, we bought some more shirts), a man told us about a race track that had races that night. We got directions there and went to that.
http://www.musiccitymotorplex.com/
The Motor City Motorplex is in the TN State Fairgrounds. It was a nice evening and we paid $20 total to get in. My mother sat in the lower seats close, but not too close, to the track. As the night went on we had a race with trucks, then with cars. I could smell all the fumes and when they came around it was LOUD and I thought of my earplugs at home on my dresser. We stayed until around 9pm. Then I watched a bit of H2O on television because I hadn’t seen it in a while. Then I went to sleep.