St. Louis, MO to Brookings, SD 4/12-4/14

After leaving Nashville, we made our way to St. Louis, which is a spot we would love to come back to as well.  Spent the night in the Cracker Barrel parking lot and woke up the next morning and enjoyed our free breakfast before we check off the Six Flags from the list of parks we have left to visit.  We weren't impressed at all with the rides but it was fun to visit and check it off our list of parks we have visited.  They really didn't have any extreme rides expect for the swings, which made Chris extremely nervous, we both hate swing rides.  After six flags, we headed into the city and took pictures at the arch and walked the river front.  It brought back memorizes for me.  When I was 14, my mom, my gymnastics coach and I traveled to St. Louis for me to compete in the first ever State Games of America competition.  It was fun to remember the good memorizes I had that summer.  The arch is just amazing to see.  Its so big.  After exploring we made our way to my aunt and uncles house for the night.  I had been in contact with my cousin letting her know we might be in the area but wasn't sure if we would be spending the night or not.  So we surprised my aunt and uncle, who I haven't seen in a too many years.  It was nice to see family again and catch up on everything.  The next morning we had breakfast with them and my cousins and left to start our journey north to Canada.  We intended to only spend the day in St. Louis but we spent the night because of the major blizzard that was hitting Fargo would not have been fun driving in it.  When we left on Sunday, the weather was not pretty but we told ourselves to only go as far as it was safe, which was Brookings, SD, just north of Sioux Falls.  We woke up today (Monday) and started our drive to Canada but only made it an hour up the road and had to pull over because of bad road conditions and bad wind.  After multiple times of ice skating on the highway and watching a trucker almost jackknife in front of us at 25mph, we pulled into a gas station put the chains on, got gas and looked at each other and said "maybe we should wait a little longer".  After an hour and half, we watched the snow plows leave the gas station and figured we should test the roads out.  The highway was clear so we took off the chains and started north.  Wouldn't have figured they just got hit by a blizzard. 

  family

  Go Alex Smith in his new home in KC  after the roads were plowed to scared to take pics while driving with the roads iced over

Nashville, TN 4/10-4/12

Alright so I am not up to date like I had hoped to be.  Traveling has been so much fun that its been hard to take my eyes off the country side and look at my phone to type down what we have been up to.  We left Florida and realized that we were on our way back home.  We made a small stop on our way to Nashville and visited Birmingham to explore the Civil Rights museum.  After that we continued our way up to Nashville. 

NASHVILLE - We got into Nashville on Wednesday night and tried to get into the Bluebird café, but it was full for the night :( if you don't know what the bluebird café is, the ABC Show Nashville has featured it many of times and is a base for the show.  I was a little upset but I got over it and took pictures and went on our way to downtown.  Chris out of nowhere said "we are spoiling ourselves, give me directions to the Gaylord Hotel" (its the hotel that's right by the Opry House).  Mark, Chris's brother told us to visit it because its an amazing hotel and we needed to check it out.  He was right, it was amazing.  When we pulled into the main check-in area we had 4 valet guys rushing up to see if we need to valet the bus and if they could drive it.  It was the funniest sight ever.  After the 10 minutes of talking to the valet guys we finally went inside to see if they had rooms available.  We were able to get a room with a view of the atrium, unpacked and then went exploring the hotel.  We went to the Jack Daniel's restaurant and had dinner and listened to the live music for the rest of the night.  The next morning we got our bearing straight and caught a bus into downtown for the day/night.  It was raining the whole day but we made the best out of it and put on ponchos and explored.  We did the typical Nashville night and went Honky Tonkin.  Basically we went into random bars, ordered beers and listened to the performers until we were ready to go to the next bar.  We went to 7 bars that night :)  it was a fun night enjoying the Nashville atmosphere.  The best part about that night was we didn't have to drive home.  Friday we drove into Nashville with bus and visited the history channels show "American Pickers" store Antique Archeology.  We wanted to see what Mike would give us for the bus ( just kidding Terry).  After that we did some more roaming around downtown before we headed back up to the hotel to our night at the Grand ole Opry.  It was such a fun experience to be at the Opry.  Their were 12 performers, Riders in the Sky, The Isaacs,  Lonestar and Chuck Wicks just to name a few.  During the show, a promotion was announced for Cracker Barrel about winning tickets/flight to California to a Brad Paisley show (online entry).  They ALSO gave away 2 free dinner tickets to Cracker Barrel to an audience member sitting in section 12, row s, set 4. I look over at Chris and I see him with his hands folded and praying "please let me win, please let me win".  Needless to say he WON.  After the show I stood in line to get Chuck Wicks autograph while Chris went to claim his prize.  What a fun way to end our time in Nashville. Defiantly a place we want to come back to and do more exploring.