Day Two: Nashville

Bonnaroo was not till tonight, today was for exploring Nashville.  After leaving our wonderful hotel we headed out.  We had gotten directions from the hotel, which exit to get off to bring us into downtown Nashville.  We were cruising along on the Interstate, getting closer to our exit, only one more exit, than a long stretch with no exits and suddenly we were like way past our exit.  What happened?  Where did our exit go?  We drove for a little longer, than decided to get off and head back.  Going back we found our exit and got off.  For some reason the other side was missing our exit.

 

It was only a little after eight, so it was still early.  We found a parking lot, right down the street from the Gaylord Center and the Country Music Hall of Fame.   Three dollars to park for the entire day!  I couldn't believe it.  In New Orleans it costs twenty dollars to park for half a day.

 

This was going to be a mellow day, just walk around and take in the sights.  We really had nothing we had to see, just explore a little.  The Hall of Fame wasn't open yet so we headed up towards Broadway.  We passed the Gaylord Center and saw the long line of people waiting to get in.  On the radio in the car we had heard that there was supposed to be a parade on Broadway at nine. 

 

This weekend was the start of the Country Fan Fair, a big even for Nashville.  Later I read that there was like 140,000 visitors to Fan Fair for the weekend.   After walking around awhile we decided to find a spot on Broadway to watch the parade.  There was people lined up and down the street, but not any really big crowds.  I'm used to Mardi Gras, with the police barricades put up and hundreds of people lining up against them, pushing towards the floats, yelling "Throw me something Mister!"

 

Here there were no police barricades, no huge crowds, no police working the crowds.  And when the parade turned the corner we saw that there wasn't really that much of a parade.  I think there was about a dozen cars with country stars and someone told me later so soap opera stars in the open back seats.  The only one I recognized was Cowboy Troy.  But the people were able to go up to the cars and get autographs, so that was kind of cool.

 

After that we went and got something to eat.  Than headed to the Hall of Fame.  The Hall of Fame is three floors, you start the tour on the third floor and work your way down.  On the bottom floor is the actual Hall of Fame, with plaques for all the members of the Hall of Fame.  The other two floors were displays of country music's history.  It starts with the old singers and as you go down towards the bottom it gets closer to the present.

 

Now I'm not a big country music fan.  There's stuff I like, but I'm not that big a listener to it.  But the Hall of Fame was really very interesting.  Jason and the Scorchers were in it, they had a display.  I was somewhat surprised by that.  They're not exactly mainstream country. 

 

The actual Hall of Fame is impressive.  It's just a circular room with the plaques on the wall, but walking around and reading them, it was reading a part of history.  Jimmie Rodgers, Johnny Cash, Carter Family, they were all there and more.

 

After the Hall of Fame we wandered around Nashville some more.  I won't bore you with all the streets and stuff.  A few highlights:  We went to the Ryman and took some pictures, walking down one street on the outdoor balcanoy of the House of Blues there was a young woman singing.  I can't remember her name now, but she wasn't bad.  She was giving small concerts out there every hour.  One thing we noticed while we were there, on almost every street corner there was a police officer.  I'm sure it was for the Fan Fair. 

 

We decided to eat before we headed out towards Bonnaroo.  We ate at Hooters.  (What can we say?  We like the food...yeah, right.)  Than it was time to head for Bonnaroo.  It was around two when we left.  We had heard so many horror stories of how long it took to get into the campsite we figured we didn't want to take a chance.  Nothing started till tommorrow, but we figured it was going to take us half the night to get in and set up so we could catch a few hours sleep before it started.

 

Nashville is about an hour outside of Manchaster where Bonnaroo was.  Once we go back on the highway our thoughs on how long this was going to take didn't improve.  They had signs up on the highway that said Bonnaroo traffic on the right, regular traffic to the left.  We figured that if they were putting traffic signs up this far back, it wasn't going to be good.  But all the way it was clear sailing. 

 

When we got to the exit we were supposed to get off at it was closed.  On the other side of the highway we could see the cars backed up along the service road, it looked like a long line.  We kept going, figuring we would get off the next exit and head back. 

 

The next exit had another entrance to Bonnaroo.  We got off, went up the service road and than turned into a field full of cars.   We were there, we could see the entrance ahead of us, there was about a dozen cars in front of us.  This couldn't be right, we couldn't have gotten in that easy.  We waited in line about an hour and a half, maybe two hours before we were up at the entrance.   No one had even searched our car.  We could see them looking in some cars, there seemed to be no real pattern to what cars they picked.  They asked us if we had glass bottles, when we told them no they said ok.  They put our bracelets on us, gave us our free cds and booklet and told us to follow the cars.  Another thirty minutes and we were parking in the field where we would set up our tent.

 

I couldn't believe it.  I had heard such horror stories.  In fact in the next day I would be talking to this one girl that has been to all the three previous Bonnaroos and she told me that last year it took her group 28 hours to just get in.  That's right, 28 hours they waited in line.  She said they were almost out of gas, they couldn't leave to get it, they would have lost their place in line.  Some of them walked to a gas station, but they didnt' have any gas cans for sale.  They bought a couple gallons of milk, poured the milk out and filled the containers up with gas and went back to their vechicle. 

 

Basically the set up was you park your car and set up your tent next to it.  Pretty simple.   We parked, said hello to our new neighbors on either side of us and set up camp. 

 

Across from us was a group of people that had a nice set up.  We found out from talking to them that they too had been to all the previous Bonnaroos.  They had their tents and than they set up a screen tent and in the screen tent had a table and basically made this their kitchen. 

 

The one guy on our right  had a pick up and set up a table in the back of his pick up and was selling food and stuff.  We hardly ever saw him go to any shows, he did a few, but mainly sat at the back of his truck trying to make some money.  On our left was a couple that ended up going to as many shows as possible.  I'm terrible with names, I know all these people introduced themselves, but I can't remember any of their names now.

 

In the pics I took you can see the sea of cars and tents, but the pictures don't do it justice.  There was cars and tents as far as you could see.  We found we were only about five/ten minutes walk from centroo, where all the concerts and stuff took place.  From talking to some of the other people there we found that they were parked/camped almost an hour's walk from centroo, that's how big this place was.

 

As we were setting up camp I realized something we had forgotten.  We had brought a small grill and had hamburgers and hotdogs to grill.  One thing we forgot....a spatula to turn the hamburgers.  The hotdogs wouldn't be that much of a problem, but it would be hard to turn the hamburgers by hand.

 

After we got set up we headed into centroo.   Once we got there we realized that this place was big.  They had five stages where the acts performed.  They also had four "cafe" tents, where local acts performed.  These were smaller areas, set up with three or four dozen tables where you could actually sit down and watch the acts.  There was two main stages, What and Which Stages.  The other three stages were smaller but still big enough.

 

We ended up just wandering around looking.  They had a comedy tent.  They had a movie tent that ran 24 hours.  This tent was also air conditioned. 

 

They had tents selling food.  There was also tents set up sellling clothes, cds, all sorts of things.  They even had some music set up at the smaller stages for tonight.  We walked around and listened to a few acts before heading back to our tent.  By the time we got  back it was close to midnight and we figured that we better get some sleep so we could start fresh for the next day. 

 

It was exciting, we were here at Bonnaroo, ready to hear some great music.