God has a sense of humour. Having planned to focus our Harvest service on Noah and the flood, I could have done without living through the real impact of severe weather, even from a distance.
Hurricane Florence was just another storm until we arrived in America, then it became real as we realised that Florence was going to visit the same places we were. This meant all our plans had to be changed. According to The Times, Florence took the forecasters by surprise as they expected her to swerve round and head back out into the ocean, but she didn’t, this was exceptional - no other hurricane in history has been in that position in the Atlantic and then made landfall in the US.
The holiday did not start well, just as we were preparing to leave the hotel rang to say there was no parking as they had no room, great news when you are flying the next day. This then took a couple of hours to sort out and we ended up in another hotel and would need to take the bus to the airport rather than the pod.
We finally left around 6.30pm and the motorway was very quiet, so it was a smooth drive and we arrived at the Sheraton Skyline around 8pm. We then had a few problems as the company had only booked 8 days rather than the 11 needed, so I had to sort that out.
Our room was very nice, apart from the loud noise from the function below. It was so loud Linda had to go and speak to the manager, who managed to get it sorted out too.
On Tuesday we had a lie in and then Starbucks for breakfast. We left the hotel just after 10:00 and caught the 423 bus to the airport, it is free as opposed to £9 on the Hoppa.
We arrived at Heathrow Terminal 5 with plenty of spare time, which was great as we needed to sort out Linda’s ticket, it had the wrong BA executive club number on it. This was not as easy as you would think it. It involved the customer service assistant phoning her colleague 3 desks down for help!
We finally got sorted and went through security and had a look at some of the shops before settling down in the lounge. We continued monitoring the impact of Hurricane Florence as it is meant to be arriving in Charlotte around the same time we are…
Our plane was meant to leave at 14.55 but was delayed for various reasons so they put us on another plane which had a different layout and had to manually reseat everyone. The flight was nine hours and was very smooth, it was a Dreamliner aircraft. We had front row seats so Linda could stretch her leg out and walk up and down. Our entertainment system failed about half way through, just as I was getting to the interesting part of the film I was watching and it took about an hour to get fixed.
Nashville is 6 hours behind UK - so we landed about 6.30pm their time, we were quickly off the plane and the first ones at the immigration desk. This was very quick and the official very pleasant. Normally it takes ages to enter, but we had landed, passed immigration, retrieved luggage and picked up our car, all in under an hour - impressive.
We were staying at a Quality Inn and Suites near the airport so we booked in, our room was bigger than my lounge back home. I then checked my email and found out the concert was cancelled, the race was cancelled and the Hurricane was likely to impact on Charlotte. This has really messed up my spreadsheet and plans!
Linda was tired and needed to rest, but I had to stay up and cancel all our plans and identify new hotels and locations to visit. I did go to bed, but couldn’t really sleep and had jet lag so I was up at 3am and continued on planning so I could present Linda with some options over breakfast. We had a cabin in the Smokey Mountains so we had to go in that direction, it is on the edge of the potential fallout from the Hurricane - depending on which way it goes.
After breakfast we left the Hotel and went to have a look around the area. We went to Opry Mills, a shopping centre, had a wander around before heading downtown. We arrived at our hotel, another Quality Hotel, checked in and dropped our bags. There was a shuttle to downtown and we caught that. It took about 5 mins.
We had a wander around downtown, saw some of the sites of Broadway, listened to country music and even went to the Johnny Cash coffee shop. Alan Jackson has a bar in town called AJ’s Good Time Bar, so we visited there, drank coke and listened to the live music.
We were hungry and left there to go to have something to eat, we went to an Italian restaurant owned by Luke Bevan. We shared a pizza before we went back to the hotel.
On Thursday I was up early again (although not so early) and went for a 4 mile run through the town, checking out all the sites. There is a distinct lack of coffee shops in the main area, so I didn’t stop and came back to the hotel. We had breakfast and then caught the shuttle back downtown.
Our plan was to go to the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum and it was a good plan. We were there about two hours ( a record for me looking around a museum). It was interesting tracing the history of county music from its roots. There was Elvis’ gold cadilac to see, but you weren’t allowed to sit in it, plus lots of clothing and guitars. Linda enjoyed it and is now better informed. After this we wandered around a few sites, before eventually finding an independent coffee shop so we could refill and Linda rest her knee. Everywhere has free wi-fi so we could do some email and check Facebook.
After this we walked back to Broadway a different way and visited AJ’s bar again, this time taking the roof top option, it was very hot in the sun drinking our coke. By now we were hungry so we went to a bar for a burger, owned by Dierks Bentley. The food was good and enjoyable. After this we went back to the hotel for a rest. Linda went for a swim as instructed by the Physio and I read my book and caught up on updating junior parkrun rotas.
On Friday we were leaving for Chattanooga which is about 132 miles South east of Nashville. We took the scenic route through Nashville, via Music Row and saw the recording studios and Linda got a few photos. It was then a pleasant drive, although reasonably busy, we did stop for a coffee on route at a mountain town. We listened to updates on the hurricane and its impact (can’t give you all the details might ruin my Harvest sermon…).
It is hot here, 92-93 degrees and you need the air conditioning. Chattangoona is in a different time zone so we had to change our watches. We went to Hamilton Place as there were some craft shops Linda could visit and hop around. We had an Air B n B apartment here and we arrived early evening. It is great, apart from I had to carry the luggage and food down three flights of stairs. We settled in and unpacked all our bags - nice to be able to find things for a change.