So we woke up at the Bly’s house this morning, who were just the coolest family.  From there we headed to the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.  Here are some pictures:

After that we headed back to New Song Church because they invited us over to have lunch with their staff today.  Since they have so many volunteer interns, around 30, they cater a lunch for them every day except Wednesdays.  The food was amazing, but even more it was really neat to see how their staff is intentional about spending time together.

After lunch we hit the road towards Iuka MS.  We took the Natchez Trace Pkwy which is this beautiful road with hardly anyone on it.  There were lots of places to stop and instantly be in the middle of nature.  Here are some pictures:

And here are some more videos from the last couple days.  Again random, but pretty fun.

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We got to meet with some great guys from New Song Christian Church.  We met with Jesse (Forgot his last name), John Hall, and Kyle Kellums for the interview, and they were great sports.  They didn’t really know what they were getting themselves into, but they were both very helpful, and fun guys to hang out with.  We also got to meet a lot of other staff members and interns, it looked like a fun place to work.

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So today we left our hotel room and headed to the Lincoln Birthplace museum in Hodgenville KY.  We got there, paid our $3 to get in, and were pretty disappointed.  While there was some neat stuff there, for the most part it was pretty boring.  However I did learn that it is likely an 11 year old girl is the reason Lincoln decided to grow a beard, or whiskers as she called them.  Supposedly she told him that if he grew whiskers, all the girls would like him, and tell their husbands to vote for him.  He started growing his beard soon after reading and responding to that little girl’s letter.

After the museum we headed to Nashville TN, and boy did we hit rain.  Pretty much our whole time on the road today was spent in the rain, and according to the weather channel, it looks like it is going to stay that way.  So far it looks like our stuff is holding up pretty well when it comes to keeping us and our stuff dry.  The tough part is seeing and being seen in the rain.  There were a couple of times when it was just pouring on us that visibility dropped very rapidly, but for the most part I just had to keep wiping my face shield, and I was fine.

We went to New Song Church once we got to Nashville and met up with some cool people there.  They have a unique student intern program with about 30 participants, yea 30 interns.  They are passionate about training people to do ministry.  That podcast will be up in the next couple days.

After the interview we headed to the Bly’s house.  Brian and Tracey Bly are friends of the Bahr’s form our home church in Parkcrest, and so they were nice enough to put us up with out ever even meeting us.  They fed us, let us play Rock Band, and most importantly they are fellow Lost fans.  Their kids are really awesome too, very fun, they reminded us of hanging out at the Moore’s house, even though this family only has 4 kids not 8.

Yesterday’s miles: 118

Today’s miles: 146

Total miles: ~5500

Yesterday we met with John Weece from Southland Christian Church, which was an awesome interview.  It will be up on Saturday.  Then we headed towards Elizabethton KY, but on the way I ran out of gas.  For some reason my tank only got 137 miles before it ran out, 27 of which was my reserve.   Normally it can go about 150 miles before it runs out, so I guess I was just using more than normal with out realizing it.  There wasn’t much I could do anyways, I hadnt seen a gas station for about 30 miles when it ran out.  I tried calling AAA, but after talking to them I realized it was easier and cheaper to just call Ryan who was about 10 miles ahead of me.  After a while we were on the road again and headed to our hotel to stay dry for the night.

I also wanted to use this post to add some pictures and vidoes that we haven’t been able to add for different reasons.

This is my extended family that I just met last week.  From left to right: Deb, my mom’s cousin; Emily and Heather, my second cousins, and Deb’s daughters.  We took this after I won another round of phase 10, and some drinking.  They were a lot of fun.

This is Ryan’s aunt and uncle, Edi and Richard Allshouse.  They were very nice people who have traveled the world.  They had a ton of cool things to show us from all their travels.

This video is very random, but I thought it would be good to just show you all what we have been up to lately.

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So I know we didn’t blog yesterday, and that is because we did a whole lot of nothing. We did go to Ryan’s uncle’s church which was pretty nice. There were 13 people there including us, so it was different but kind of nice. After church we went to his uncle’s house and napped, then they took us out to an all you can eat Chinese place where I stuffed my self.

Today we were lazy again. Around noon. We finally started moving and Richard, his uncle, took us around Oak Ridge TN, which was where the atom bomb was developed.

We finally left Oak Ridge around 3pm towards Lexington KY. We stopped at walmart, of course, in Richmond. We also ate dinner at a White Castle for the first time ever. We both thought that place was gross. Don’t know what all the hype was, just crappy little burgers with bad onions on them. Fortunately there was a lot of different sauces there to drown out the bad taste of the burgers.
Other than that Kentucky is beautiful, lots of bugs but still very pretty.

As I am sure you all have read from our earlier post, it has been an exciting day.  Last night we stayed at the Iron Horse campground which caters primarily to the biker crowd, and fortunately for us their campground is next to the parking lot which means that all night we were woken up by the sounds of Harley’s driving by.   So from the git go this morning we were tired, then we hit the Dragon’s Tail.  318 turns in 11 miles!

I can’t really pick on Nathanael for riding extremely slow because he did what was comfortable to him, but I on the other hand would have liked to take it up a notch and hit some corners a little faster.   No doubt the Dragon deserves respect and it wasn’t till after we finished the Tail of the Dragon that we found that flyer that listed all of the deaths on the highway, probably better that way.

We then headed up to Oak Ridge, Tennessee to visit my Uncle Richard and his wife Edi.  Their house is amazing, tall trees down a huge sloping backyard!  Something we don’t ever see living in southern California.  We then headed to a concert hall for Fundraiser for the Oak Ridge Symphony.  It had really good food and a lot of people that we got to talk to a share our stories with.  After the diner we headed into the hall and watched a stringed trio do their thing.  Violin, Cello, and Piano, a little different from the normal Rock N Roll music that I normally have blasting in my helmet.  It was a perfect way to end an extremely intense day of riding motorcycles.

Miles:  Today-100     Total:  5000

Ryan

So today we rode The Tail of the Dragon which is an 11 miles stretch of 2 lane highway with over 300 curves in it.  It is probably one of the most famous spots for riders all over the country.  We saw people from everywhere there.  The pictures below are of us at Deal’s Gap where there is this tree that bikers put there parts on after a crash on this highway.  As you can see there have been a few wrecks there.  Fortunately for us, we had no parts to attach.

Here is map with all the curves, and where people have died along the road.

This video is mainly the footage of us riding through the Dragon.  It may make you a little sick, so there is your warning.  See if you can count all the curves.

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