♫ Music City Get Together ♫ – Last Stanza

Our next stop was the Tennessee State Museum.  Many years ago, we had taken our kids to the museum when we travelled to Nashville for a swim meet.  But when we pulled up to the museum, I knew it was not the same museum.  Turns out in 2018, the museum moved from its previous location near the state capital to a brand-new building and still offered free admission.

As soon as you enter, there is a very nice children’s section of the museum that gives kids a chance for a hands-on experience.  On the floor is a map of the state with all the major cities and on the walls surrounding the map, were displays for which the major cities were known.  For Memphis, it was a recreation of the STAX recording studio.

We spent a long time in there which allowed us adults to have another nice visit.  We then moved into the first of many exhibit halls.  There were two very informative films about the geological history of the state and about the people who had inhabited the state.

The museum was huge and much like the zoo the previous day, we only got to see a small part of it, but in even the short time there, we all learned many things about the state, and my wife and I both agreed we would have to come back for a much more extensive exploration of the museum.

Across from the museum is the Nashville Farmer’s market which in addition to having two large open-air structures for craft and produce sellers, also has an eclectic selection of take-away food sellers where everyone had a chance to pick the type of food they wanted for lunch.

On Friday of that week, we took the boys to Nashville’s children’s museum, the Adventure Science Center and much like the science museum we had visited in St. Louis last year, this museum had many hands-on displays which offered learning experience through working scientific demonstrations.

In the center, it had an impressive three-story play climbing structure.  In different wings of the museum, it had science areas about dinosaurs, space exploration, musical instruments and the human body.  The boys spent most of their time at a water table that allowed kids (and adults) to alternate the flow of the water to simulate different circulatory pathways within the body.

There were also a planetarium and makerspace although we did not take them in on this visit.

On our last day together, we went to the Lane Motor Museum with a tagline of: “Unique Cars from A to Z.”  The collection, housed in a former Sunbeam bread factory, includes over 500 vehicles with 150 on display at a time and the rest housed in a vault (for which you could purchase a separate guided-tour admission).  That morning, the HVAC was not functioning and so they offered a steep discount on general admission.  And as soon as we walked into their showroom, I could see many very unusual looking cars.

The above is not trick photography.  Rather, it’s a standard Citroen car that has been narrowed down to be a tandem 2-seater, three-wheel car.  It is also not a “one-off” as production figures over the years sold were in the thousands.

One of the special exhibits they had featured different station wagon designs and of course this Mini “Woody” immediately caught my eye.

It did not take me long to see that they had some of the most unusual looking cars I had ever seen.

But the most unusual one we saw was this 1932 propeller driven car, a barn find in France.

We just so happened to be there at the time when a museum docent gave a demonstration of the car.

For preservations purposes, they never increase the throttle above 50% but with that speed, he encouraged us to get behind the car and feel the amount of airflow even at half maximum throttle.

Leaving this museum meant our time together was coming to a close.  We returned to our rental to pack up our car before hitting the road.  As always, it was sad to know we were departing as soon as I captured one more group photo.

On our easy 3-hour drive home, my wife and I talked about what a great visit it had been that week and what all we had learned that Nashville had to offer.

For my wife, a life-long Memphian and for me, having lived in Memphis for 55 years, Nashville has always been a “drive-through” city rather than a “drive-to” city.  On previous occasions we had made short stays in Nashville for a wedding, a swim meet, or an occasional party.  But we had never stayed in town for almost an entire week.

We talked about the many fun things we had done and some of the things for which we did not have time.  I suggested just the two of us come back on another trip to spend time in some of the museums and to discover others as well.  This we plan to do next spring when we will once again have fun in the Music City!