Weekend Tennessee Road Trip

In May, my wife and took a road trip, one that I had been wanting for us to take for several years.  Pre-pandemic, a friend of mine at the gym had told me about a historic hotel not far from Memphis that was near the Buffalo River.  He mentioned that he and his wife had gone and stayed there several times and rented kayaks to float the river.

The Commodore Hotel is located in downtown Linden, TN, about a 2.5-hour drive from Memphis.  Originally built in 1933, the hotel became abandoned years later and then converted into other commercial uses.  In 2007 a couple from Rhode Island bought the old building, renovated it, and reopened it.  It’s eleven well preserved hotel rooms are all located on the second floor up the staircase behind the registration desk.

The hotel is named for Commodore Matthew Perry, a US Navy officer who served in several wars and for whom the county is named (and thus the connection).  Consistent with its namesake, the hotel interior has a characteristic nautical theme.  My wife and I arrived on a Thursday evening and checked into the Commodore’s Quarters.

Linden is a fairly small town with very few restaurants and upon our arrival, we found none of them open and so purchased several items at the grocery store a block away and had a very nice picnic in our room.

On Friday morning after breakfast, we decided to visit something we had never been to before but had seen numerous times.  For almost our entire  lives, we have traversed Interstate 40 east from Memphis and always passed signs to visit Loretta Lynn’s Ranch.  Just a few miles up from exit 143, it was a short 30-minute drive from our hotel.

We first visited her museum which housed an incredible number of items from her career.  On the walls above all of the exhibits were covers from all the albums she recorded in her 50+year career.  I was absolutely amazed at the number.

Prominently featured were many of the gowns she wore during her multitude of public performances and there was one display dedicated to the creative seamstress who created all of these dresses for her, over 800 in total.

Also included in the museum of particular interest to me were many of the cars she had owned along with the tour bus featured in the 1980 movie Coalminer’s Daughter (a replica of the actual one).

We later learned that over her career, she spent between 200 and 300 days a year on the road and this room at the back of the bus was her home away from home for all those days.

In addition to admission to the museum, we bought the combination ticket that included a guided tour of Loretta Lynn’s Antebellum home.

To emphasis the literal rags-to-riches story, the tour first started at an exact replica of the home she grew up in that had been built on the site.  You might recognize this from the movie.  The actual home is still in Butcher’s Hollow, KY.

In the kitchen, to the far right is hanging one of the dresses Sissy Spacek wore while portraying Loretta in the movie.  And if you are wondering why there was a clothesline in the kitchen, it was out of practicality.  The coal mine was not far away and had the clothes been hung outdoors; they would have been covered with black coal dust in no time.

We next made our way to the home they bought in 1966.  Lorretta had seen the home while she and “Do” were on a drive and she exclaimed: “I had to have it as it looks just like the home from the movie Gone with the Wind.”  And she did and she lived there for the next 22 years before building their final home literally in the backyard!

The extreme contrast to the first home was dramatic and this home was filled with many items she collected as well as gifts from fans.

In fact, several of the scenes from the movie were filmed in this house.

After lunch, we made our way to a winery not far away.

With the tasting room housed in the winery’s founder’s log cabin, my wife quickly made friends with the four-legged resident there.

That night after a pre-prandial Old Fashioned in the hotel’s Speakeasy Bar, we had dinner in the hotel’s café which features live music every Friday night.

Saturday morning, we were ready for the real reason we took this trip—to kayak the Buffalo River.   The hotel makes it easy as they have their own rental company.  We first dropped off our car at the take-out point and then rode with the kayaks to the put-in spot.

A friend visiting the owner offered to capture our picture, as having been encouraged by their website, we had left our cellphones in the car to avoid them possibly ending up at the bottom of the river.

My wife and I had been kayaking only once before, and that was on a lake over 20 years ago when our oldest son was graduating from UT-Austin.  This was our first time on a river.  The Buffalo River is a very calm river which makes floating it ideal.  However, overnight, severe storms had swelled the river, so it was running a bit faster than normal.

It took a while for us both to get a hang of it.  But before that, my wife couldn’t avoid getting herself turned sideways, whereupon I then crashed into her boat.  This then sent me over towards the shore where I ran under a fallen tree.  Fortunately, neither of us flipped.  In fact, we made the whole five miles without tipping over once.

While we never encountered what you might call white water, there were numerous places where either the river narrowed, where trees had fallen in the river, or where the river significantly shallowed that caused for a very rapid and treacherous current.  But we managed these as well.  Without any way to tell time, we had no idea how long we had been on the water until we got back to our car and captured this photo of us with my phone.

Advertised as a 3 to 5-hour trek, we had done it in an hour and 40 minutes!

If you are ever in the area, I cannot encourage you enough to stay at the Commodore Hotel.  There you will meet and be greeted by both Kathy and Michael, very active participants in the business they own (in fact, Michael drove the van with the kayaks, Kathy called me the day before our arrival with helpful information and she served as our bartender as well).  They kindly showed us some great Southern hospitality and we will definitely go back for another visit.