Yesterday was one of those days when not much was going on around town, but we felt up for adventure. We decided to create our own. Les came up with the idea of walking from our house into downtown Nashville -– about a 6-mile walk. We knew we were capable of doing it, we just didn’t know how long it would take us or how walker-friendly the route would be. I’ve always felt that you are sure to see interesting things when you walk instead of drive, so we packed our camera into my little “Mr. Friendly” backpack (I bought it in Taiwan. It looks like this, but it’s yellow instead) and headed out.
We followed the same route that we usually drove when heading to the Predators hockey games. It was kind of a warm day and, 15 minutes into the hike, I had out my bandana and my persp-towel, and was sweating like crazy. I was sure that we were going to be completely dehydrated by the time we got to downtown and started wondering, “Why are we doing this again?” which is not really a good thing to be thinking 15 minutes into your multi-hour hike. We stopped and drank big bottles of water about an hour into our walk and used the extremely air conditioned restrooms at a gas station (I mean, it was COLD in there!), which much improved my mood and outlook. We passed some things we had wanted to check out up close and took photos -– a multi-nozzle fire hydrant spigot, a set of abandoned train cars on a bridge, a big cemetery with rolling hills and interesting monuments, a cute yellow building near the power station, construction projects along our route that we had been curious about, etc. I also looked over the edge of every bridge we walked over, just because that’s something I like to do.
We also noticed things we weren’t expecting to see. There’s a house on Spence Lane that has about 40 cement animals scattered around the yard. We had seen that before, but what we hadn’t noticed was that every single animal was wearing a small pair of sunglasses in honor of the summer season. This was probably the highlight of our trip. We also realized that many of the bridges on Hermitage Avenue have people living under them, way up high in the “rafters,” where you would never see them if you were just driving by (I’ve since tried).
It took us about three hours to get into downtown, but we did dawdle along the way. We were sweaty, dirty, smelly, and just overall unappealing by the time we got there. We walked down Broadway and all the tourists looked so clean and sweet-smelling by comparison. I felt like I had just come down from the mountains into civilization. We went into one of the little ice cream shops to get water and use the bathrooms and enjoy the air conditioning, and then we strategized our next steps.
We decided to walk across the pedestrian bridge into East Nashville and see how that went. We were able to find the “cool” part of town and got some snacks at The Turnip Truck (I just love that little place!). Les got directions to Rosepepper Cantina in East Nashville. One of our vegan friends had told us that they offered healthful, quality food with lots of vegetarian (and even vegan) options. Since we were “in the neighborhood” we decided to try it out.It took us another 45 minutes to walk to the Rosepepper. You kind of go out of the neighborhoody parts of East Nashville to get there, so we wondered if we were lost. Getting lost in a car can be frustrating and inconvenient, but getting lost on foot on a multi-hour hike can make you feel like you’re going to have to sleep out here on the streets because you’re expending the same energy you need to get home. Despite my moment of doubting, our good directions didn’t fail us and we soon were sitting down (ahhhh!) and eating some delicious Mexican food. It was some of the best food we ever had and walking four hours to get it might have had something to do with that.
After dinner, we were in a hurry to get home. We had about four hours of real daylight left and, unfortunately, the area closest to our house is the worst area for pedestrians (very little shoulder by the road, no sidewalks, and hills/curves that don’t give you or cars much visibility) so we were eager to get through there when we could be well-seen. It took us about 3.5 hours to make the trip back home from Rosepepper. We had a fast pace and lots of energy after fueling up our bodies. Nonetheless, the last 15 minutes were really hard. We were tired, and it seemed like the entire last part of our hike was uphill (you also don’t notice all the hills along your route until you’re walking), including the major hill into our apartment complex. I had to do some serious motivational lectures in my head to stop from throwing a temper tantrum and insisting that Les get the car and come back for me.
We did make it home before dark and it did feel great to have walked all the way from our house to East Nashville and back. What a sense of accomplishment! Today we went out and drove our route to see how many miles we walked. Although we were extremely tired yesterday and still tired today, we were still surprised by the total –- 20 miles! This is by far the furthest we’ve ever walked! Best of all, I got 45,058 steps yesterday. A new record!
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