Tyennasaye! (Picture heavy. 56K = NO)

Tennessee

Chattanooga

Okay, here's the deal on Chattanooga. It's beautiful. There's an unbelievable amount of unbelievable outdoors stuff to do. From hang gliding to zip lining, kayaking, climbing, even spelunking caves hundreds of feet underground (One of which has an amazing waterfall. Underground.) Outdoors, yes, it was as amazing as it sounds.

I stayed at a campground on Raccoon Mountain. It was really sweet, but kinda lame and touristy at the same time. Sweet, because I stayed in a cabin for $35 bucks a night. Lame, because there was also an arcade and go karts on site. Raccoon Mountain has caves on the campsite. It's a guided tour, kinda touristy, but still pretty neat. Overall, their cave pales in comparison to the other cave I checked out (yeah, the one with the waterfall). It's called Ruby Falls. It has some amazing history to it, as I learned on my other touristy guided tour. Some guy found it about a hundred years ago, crawled through a ridiculously narrow crawlspace hundreds of feet underground just to explore (psycho), for 17 hours. In total darkness. Yeah, insane. What's crazier is that his efforts finally payed off when he found what would later be called Ruby Falls, a waterfall hundreds of feet underground. He went back and asked his girlfriend to go with him (She too, insane), and she actually did. She crawled with him in total darkness for 17 hours to find a waterfall. He married her and named the waterfall after her, her name was Ruby. How sweet. I got a lot of pictures of this place, here are some sweet ones for your viewing pleasure:

Okay, not a picture. But still. Best view of Ruby falls I could getchya'll. The pictures of it came outkinda shitty :/ Like I said, Caves are not very conducive to picture taking.

The other Pictures here are from Raccoon Mountain caves, Ruby Falls Caves, and Rock City, a beautiful toursity site (note, the lighting in caves is obviously horrible. They're caves) :

Raccoon Mtn caves:

 Ruby Falls Caves! (Way more sweet)

Looking up the falls area. Sweet lighting, huh?

Leo Lambert convinced his girlfriend to crawl through that space for 17 hours in total darkness to check out the waterfall which he named after her, seen in the video above.

Better idea of the size of the aforementioned crawl space. Ridiculous.

After Ruby Falls, I went up Hill City's hill a little further to another tourist attraction called Rock City. It was beautiful, but a bit too kitchy around some corners. Oh well, here are some sweet pictures of that place, including a badass waterfall I totally wanted to jump off. I'm pretty sure I'd get arrested or something though. :(

The Rest of these pics are of Rock City. Also a cool place to check out:

Guys, you have no idea how badly I wanted to jump. You really, really don't.

I don't know the story behind these, but they're neat sculptures!

The rest of Chattanooga? Skip it. Well, not really. Check out THE REST of the outdoors, but as for downtown? Fuck it. No singles scene, mostly college sweethearts who went to UTC (University of Tennessee in Chattanooga), settled down, and got married. I was there on the weekend, and this city that is considerably larger than Burlington had insurmountably less to do downtown. The bars were all pretty “meh.” Seriously. Saturday night I ended up at a hotel bar, because way more interesting people are at hotel bars in cities like these. Trust me. 

It's not to say I didn't meet anyone cool downtown, it was just so... lackluster. I went to a place that is apparently a Microbrewpub chain (as I visited one here in Nashville last night), called Big River. They had a solid IPA, and an Oktoberfest that the staff has clearly been paid to tell you that it's their bet beer. It's also a quarter more, but it also comes in a half liter mug. It was pretty “so-so” in the way of Oktoberfests. I got something off their menu, but I can't recall what. It was a sort of tuscan pasta dish with sausage and chicken. It was delicious. Friendly staff, good bartenders, and the best crowd I could find in Chattanooga aside from all the tow-truck convention guys who bought me beers (Thanks guys!), and the Milf and her Mother who left me their wine (thanks, ladies!). I feel it necessary to mention that these two women (mother and daughter) were kind of badasses. They tried to steal Champagne and Wine from a restaurant, still int he glass. A vigilante waitress chased them a couple of blocks down downtown Chattanooga to retrieve them. What a die-hard employee. Oh well, a couple of really cool ladies. Took a cab home that night. Sheesh.

I also went to one bar called The Hair of the Dog Pub. It was cool. Talked to some guy from Atlanta about baseball for awhile because he was a sox fan. I ordered a burger. If you find yourself there, do that. It didn't come out medium rare like I asked, but it was really, really well seasoned.

Nashville

Night one in Nashville was pretty wild. I started off trying to go to a microbrewery, as per my norm. I went to Yazoo first. People here love that beer. They were closed. Bummer. I will say that all the beers I've tried of theirs have been amazing. Especially the Dos Perros. It's very different. It's a mexican style beer, but it's also got a real roasted flavor to it. Very, very interesting. Definitely try this beer if you get the chance. (I'm drinking one from a bottle as I type this blog post out.)

I then tried another brewery around the corner. Also closed. Apparently brewers around here don't do Mondays. Oh well, neither would I. I don't remember the name of this place. Whatever.

I then went to the Blackstone pub and brewery. They had a fantastic brown stout, and... I forget what else. I didn't write it down, and their website is undergoing maintenance. Oh well, I'd recommend this place. I also got some weird sandwich I'd never heard of called a Mufaletta . It was some New Orleans invention. It was delicious. It had Salami and some kind of Olive relish on it. The bread was fantastic, it was covered in cheddar and swiss cheese. Oh, man, it was great. The bartender gave me a lot of good info on where to hit up. He even suggested a nude karaoke strip club, which sounded way too awesome to pass up as my first strip club. I went later in the night, it was called The Brass Stables, and it was pretty hilarious and awesome. I'd say it was a good first strip club, it was expensive, though :\ I suppose that's the way those places are... Oh well.

I went to a karaoke bar where they have a designated singer singing when no one else wants to. It was called Lonnie's. I got there when they opened, and the girl singing at the beginning of the day stole my heart faster than anyone ever has. Here's hoping you're reading this, Logan! She had a beautiful voice, and was very sweet.

The sweet thing about Nashville downtown is that there is music in literally 90% of bars at ALL times. A lot of them were country, and a lot of them were boring to me, but that doesn't detract from the fact that that is an amazing feat for a city to accomplish. I was really wowed by that.

I went to another Big River Brewery in Nashville, same deal. Friendly staff, great crowd of people. Kinda slow, as I went around closing time on a Monday night (10ish). Whatever, great food, I got Reuben Spring rolls, they were fantastic.

I then headed back to my hotel area to write up the Nashville post, and got distracted by a bar called Music City Bar and Grill. I ended up staying there till closing. Really, really friendly people. Talked to them about all sorts of music. Unfortunately some people around here think that Nickelback is a great band, alongside Creed and Evanessence. Gross. It's okay, though, they were a wonderful crowd of people. The bartender there was kind of the man, too. I'll probably be back there before I leave.

I took Tuesday off from doing things because I was

1. exhausted from this trip so far
2. Hungover, and
3. it was raining out all day.

Today is wednesday, and as per Ms. Stearns's advice, I went to an area of Nashville called 5 points. It was a small little area with a couple cool bars. I stopped in at Beyond the Edge. Kind of bro-y bar with an adult crowd. It was sort of lame, but it was about 2 p.m. On a wednesday, so I'll let it slide. The bartender, J.D., was a really nice lady. She was fun to talk to, she was very Irish and full of energy. I also talked to some guy who took an interest in my endeavor to find a new place to live. He recommended the south over the north for income tax reasons. He had lived all over this side of the country, so I will certainly take his advice into consideration. Thanks, stranger.

After a drink, I asked J.D. What other bars in the area Alyssa had recommended to me were worth while. She told me to go down the street to the 3 crows bar. I went there and had a great time. Even at 3 p.m. On a Wednesday!

I got talking about beer to a man and woman next to me, who were both from Mississippi. They gave me some places to check out in both Mississippi and Louisiana. Should I take them up on their recommendations, I will certainly be blogging about them.

I then got talking to a guy who owns a restaurant around here in Nashville. He had a pretty cool story. He had been a musician in Germany when he was younger, and for that reason, knew his beer damn well. He is a blogger of religious topics, and a very, very smart guy. It's awesome to hear a guy who blogs about religion in Tennessee say “If someone put a gun to my head and said pick one religion, I'd probably say Taoism.” Much respect. He was a well-spoken, opinionated guy, much like myself. We agree on how much we love to argue, not for the sake of “being right,” like many misunderstand us to be, but truly for the sake of gaining perspective on what the other humans on this planet actually hold emotionally true and dear to themselves, and why. Here's his blog in hopes that he links mine someplace that'll help get me hits! http://docdowns.com/blog He mostly blogs about "religious stuff, and that bullshit." (his words. awesome dude)

The Bartender at the 3 crows bar was also a sweet young woman named Amy, (I hope I remembered that right since she said she'd be reading the blog...) Here's a little shout out just for you, thanks for your company. :)

I've got a little time left in what I've heard called Nash Vegas, but I don't think there's much else for me to check out here. I'll probably go make some second appearances at some bars downtown. I'll update if necessary.

Next stop is New Orleans. I'm very excited. I'm hoping to not spend a lot of money, but I have a feeling I will. Oh well. Here's hoping.

See you on the road.

-Skwar