In love with Tennessee

I’m typing out under the stars on a warm, clear Tennessee night, crickets chirping, bugs swarming. Ahhh. It’s been an idyllic country road trip kind of day. Audrey and I are spending tonight at Edgar Evans State Park. We arrived just after dark and managed to set up our tent without much trouble and now we’re enjoying the evening at a picnic table. Audrey is perhaps a bit better at traditional “camping” activities. She’s singing along with her guitar as I upload photos and write on my laptop. I have no idea when I’ll get a chance to actually upload this post to the Internet. Yesterday my computer decided that it no longer recognizes my wireless card, so I had no luck connecting to our hostel’s free Wi-Fi. Hopefully the problem can be resolved on the road or else my posting will become quite sparse.

Anyhow, back to our lovely day . . . We checked out of Music City Hostel this morning and headed west (wrong direction, but a purposeful detour) to visit Loretta Lynn’s Dude Ranch in Hurricane Mills, Tenn. Once again, we were relying on MapQuest directions. They instructed us to take an earlier freeway exit than the ranch Web site’s very general directions, but we decided to stick with it since Tennessee likes circular roads and they probably link to the same place. Miles down charming country roads, we turned down Hurricane Mills Road. MapQuest claimed we would find the ranch if we simply followed the road .3 miles down. We felt like we’d gone back in time driving down the country gravel road, bordered by a creek and lined with trees decked out in their fall finery. After five miles or so, we were quite certain MapQuest had led us astray, but we spotted signs to a church and elected to drive a bit further to see what we could. We stopped on the road to snap photos of a grand old farmhouse perched on a hill and began to fantasize about how idyllic it would be to live out here – for just six months or so, though. We’d have to give up a bit more than we’re willing to actually adopt that simple, country lifestyle. We continued on to find the little country church, which we were pleased to find is pastured by a man they call Brother Buddy Mullinax. We decided there was no way Loretta’s ranch could be this far down, so we re-traced our path and returned to the freeway, exiting where the ranch instructions told us to and following the very obvious signs that led us straight to the ranch. Once we arrived, Audrey spotted a sign for the same little country church we’d found. Evidently, the road does loop through and would have led us to the ranch eventually. Oh well, it was a pleasant detour.

For those of you who aren't familiar with country music greats, Loretta Lynn is one of them. She's the perfect example of a rags-to-riches story: She grew up in a large, poor family in Kentucky, where her dad eeked a living farming by day and mining coal by night. She married before her fourteenth birthday and had given birth to four of her six children by the time she was eighteen (and became a grandma at thirty). Along the way, her husband (called "Doolittle" because he "did little" and "Mooney" for his moonshine habit) bought her a guitar and she began performing, eventually earning a gig as a regular at the Grand Old Opery. With a life like that, it's no wonder that she ended up writing so many country music hits, huh?

Anyhow, now Loretta is old (although she still performs) and lives out on her ranch which is open to the public. We visited the Coal Miner's Daughter Museum where Loretta displays her many awards, family photos, dozens of ridiculously glitzy dresses and other random memorabilia. The museum - and the whole ranch - was very Loretta: unsophisticated, cheesy and endearing. She even hand-wrote many of the descriptions in her museum, spelling errors and all. We also toured the ranch's 1800's-era plantation home where Loretta lived for several decades and the replica of a coal mine and her childhood home that she had built on the site. Our tour guide was a charming old man with a fantastic Tennessee hills accent who called Audrey and I "Thelma and Louise" after hearing that we were on a road trip. He also recommended the fried bologna sandwiches that Loretta's daughter sells at her little country store nearby. We did stop in for a sandwich, but played it safe with turkey and ham.