Today was a sad day, instead of doing group activities I was cast aside like yesterday's garbage (American for trash) to make my own way in the badlands of the Southern USA. As an eternal optimist I decided to make the most of my situation by planning the most awesome day I could think of, to this end I got up early to make sure the car was mine for the day and headed South for Huntsville Alabama.
It is important to start any busy day with a good breakfast, to this end I sought the closest branch of Denny's. Amazingly there is not a single branch in Nashville so I survived on a diet of hot tamales and luke warm Pepsi Max until I arrived at the Huntsville branch of Denny's some 120 miles away.
 |
| a coffee cup |
At this point it was lucky M and E were not with me as Denny's proceeded to deliver the kind of quality and service that they think is the Denny's norm, rather than this terrible exception. It started with coffee taking ages, then a spillage on my table (by the waitress), then no cutlery and so on. Really disappointed by what is usually an excellent chain.
Huntsville Denny's does have one thing going for it and that it its proximity to the Marshall Space Flight Center, NASA's home in Alabama. This is a location that is well known to any space geek as it was where the Saturn V rocket was largely developed and following on from that the booster and main tanks used by the Space Shuttle.
 |
| me with a Saturn V |
The visit started with a bit of a let down in that I was not able to take part in the bus tour round the site as I am not a US citizen, I should have lied. But the rest of the facility was incredible. In recent years I have visited its more famous cousins in Houston and Florida and found they had been seriously dumbed down to the point they were more like soft play areas where they used to do space stuff. Given Huntsville's more out of the way location it was clear that less money had been invested in the facility and it was all the better for it with actually interesting exhibits and things to see.
 |
| a space shuttle |
The shuttle display comprises a genuine set of tanks / boosters and a shuttle that was made from 'scrap rocket parts' so that the folks at Cape Kennedy could practice moving the vehicle around with a crane. It weighs the same as the real thing but started out not looking much like it. Eventually it was used in a US / Japan space exchange programme and was tarted up so it now looks pretty much like the real thing. It was great to see one outside and relatively free of crowds.
The museum also has not one, but two Saturn V rockets, one inside displayed Florida style and another upright unit. Very very impressive.
After I was geeked out I decided to take a detour and visit Lynchburg TN, home of the Jack Daniels distillery. I drove a fair bit out of the way and arrived at my destination only to remember a few important facts, the first being I don't really like Jack Daniel's and the second being I was driving. Therefore I did a quick lap of the museum then got back on the road.
 |
| a statue of Jack Daniels |
I got back to the house at about 4:04PM to wondering what the others had got up to today only to find that when I left I had accidentally locked them in the house so they could not go anywhere. Luckily our Air BnB hosts had left a Netflix login and there was still some food left from the trip to the ghetto grocery so not real harm done.
That evening we headed for Broadway, which is Nashville's main drag. It is quite an amazing place with loads of bars each featuring a different live act. We started at on called something or other then went to some others with different names. The best was the one where the band played Footloose, the worst was when they were singing boring slow songs.
 |
| Nelfie (portmanteau of Nashville and Selfie) |
We were also delighted, but not delighted enough to go in, to see a further outpost of Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville empire front and centre of Broadway. This trip has hammered home to me what different lives the three of us lead, I am generally just getting going at about 21:00 which is about when the other two are ready to head home. That said today I was also knackered by 21:00 so an early-ish night was had by all, with the onset of sleep only delayed by Dumb and Dumber being on the television.
Tomorrow I have a surprise outing planned, we are going to the Dukes of Hazzard museum......
Comments
Post a Comment