Music City Flyaway

As Liz was on the way home from work on a Saturday morning at 7:30 after working the night shift, she was listening to the radio and the DJ said “13th caller gets Nightmare on 13th tickets.” Being tired and also wanting to go to the best haunted house in Utah, Liz called and was the 8th and then the 13th caller. So she won the tickets. They then said that she was entered into a drawing for a flyaway to Nashville to the CMA Awards Show. The drawing was the following Monday at 7:15 am. I was on the bus to school and I got a text that said “We’re going to Nashville.” I did not believe it and thought she was playing some sort of sick joke on me, but she actually won and we went to Nashville to the CMA Awards for FREE! Here are a lot of pictures with a little explanation on what we did the whole time.

Tuesday

We got to Nasvhille in the evening, and had a nice little buffet waiting for us at our little hotel. The trip was all organized by a company that did this for a bunch of radio station winners around the nation. Our hotel was nice and was right downtown so we could pretty much walk to everything that we went to. That night they had a CMA songwriters concert with Chris Young and three guys that wrote the following songs:

• Brett James
• The Man I Want To Be” / Chris Young
  “Jesus, Take The Wheel” / Carrie Underwood
  “When The Sun Goes Down” / Kenny Chesney
  “The Truth” / Jason Aldean
• Josh Kear
• “Need You Now” / Lady Antebellum
  “Before He Cheats” / Carrie Underwood
  “Wild At Heart” / Glorianna
  “Bama Breeze” / Jimmy Buffet
• Rivers Rutherford
• “Real Good Man” / Tim McGraw
  “Ain’t Nothin’ Bout You” / Brooks & Dunn
  “When I Get To Where I’m Going” / Brad Paisley & Dolly Parton

Wednesday

The day of the show they served us a nice breakfast, and during breakfast we had 3 aspiring country stars perform at our hotel on a small stage. They were aspiring but we heard their songs on the radio a few times. The picture on the right is with one of the performers: Ashley Gearing (she is 19)

The weather was beautiful and we had the rest of the afternoon to roam around Nashville. It was awesome and a fun city as there are lots of bars and everyone has live bands. Here are a few pictures from walking the strip.

We started at the Vietnam War Memorial

Looked into getting some Cowboy Boots and Hats

Got some Ice Cream and chilled with Elvis

Went down by the river and got a picture with Aaron Kelly—got 4th on last season of American Idol

We were supposed to dress nice for the show, so we cleaned up and got ready for the show.

(Unfortunately we were told that we were not allowed to bring our camera into the arena where the show was so we have no pictures from the show, but it was an awesome show. We loved the performances by Taylor Swift, Keith Urban, Jason Aldean & Kelly Clarkson, Zac Brown Band & Alan Jackson, and Rascal Flatts)

Thursday

The trip was supposed to end this day, but we decided that we were going to get a hotel for one more night and enjoy Nashville for another day. We were happy for this decision. We went back downtown and had fun eating some good ol’ fashion southern barbecue and roaming through the stores.

This is just right outside of our hotel.

 

The main street as well as a cool painted building

Davey Crockett, king of the wild frontier

That night the people organizing the trip gave us tickets to the filming of a country Christmas concert that aired the Monday after Thanksgiving. It was a great concert with Brad Paisley, Rascal Flatts, LeAnn Rimes, Reba and Kellie Pickler. It was a lot of fun and we brought the camera to this one.

The stage. If you look close in the right one you will see all the stars singing the finale. (even though it was the second song performed, but the finale for the show)

Friday

Liz wanted to go to Kentucky as she seeks to go to every state. She found a national park called the Mammoth caves, just over the border and so after grabbing some waffle house grits, we drove an hour up to the largest caves in the World. We went down about 250 feet but as you can see it was really easy (all walking down stairs) and that it was not claustorphobic at all. It was a lot of fun and we were glad we went up there.

On the bus to the entrance and then in the caves

They called this section on the left the Subway cause it looks like a train could go through.

And a kissing picture since it was like our second honeymoon!

After we got out of the caves we drove around the park for a little bit and took this sweet photo session in the woods.

We loved Kentucky and Tennessee