Nashville to Hendersonville, NC
Be completely humble and gentle, be patient, bearing with one another in love
Ephesians 4:2
We got up bright and early (but still AFTER all our guests had already finished breakfast) and headed down to the bus to finish preparing lunch. Since we had prepared the filling last night all we had to do was roll the enchiladas. And by “we” I mean Mary. I had the laborious task of opening the 3 cans of refried beans and dumping them in the crock pot. But mostly I was working on making coffee. Several people thought my French Vanilla coffee sounded good, so I made a whole pot. This is a VERY slow coffee maker! By the time it was done only one person still wanted some and I later threw his away. I guess I’ll be drinking alone from here on out.
At 8:35 we got to Belle Meade Plantation which opened at 9:00. Fortunately the girl working the front desk was just walking up and she graciously offered to let us in early. We got a tour of the mansion and then wandered the property. In it’s hay-day, Belle Meade was a premier thoroughbred race horse farm. They raised the great, great, etc grandpa to Secretariat, Sea Biscuit and 11 out of the 13 Triple Crown Winners. Impressive!
One of our passengers had not been feeling well and so stayed on the bus so I went back to check on him. After throwing up, he was feeling much better. Yikes. Hopefully it was just something he ate at the restaurant last night and not something we served. We are passing out so much junk food and chocolate, it’s a wonder more people aren’t sick. I hope I can still fit in my pants on day 10.
After Belle Meade we served lunch on the road and basically just drove the rest of the day. We got to our restaurant destination, Piggy & Harry’s around 6:00. We had just served them Sweet Potato Pie at 4:00 before the time changed and it went from afternoon to dinner time. I really liked this restaurant because it had LOTS of character. But some of the passengers were a little underwhelmed by their food. I guess I have a pretty low bar when it comes to dinner. It may also have had a little to do with the fact that no one was even hungry when we got there. The back story on this restaurant: I was telling Bruce that we were spending the night in Hendersonville, but I couldn’t remember which state it was in. He told me it was North Carolina and he had been there with Randy Storms and his family when they were younger. He remembered getting ice cream at Piggy’s when he was there so I googled it and since it was only a mile from our hotel, we decided to go there. I figured any place that had been in business that long had to be decent.
After dinner and cleaning the bus, I was ready to crash. But somehow I ended up playing 5 Crowns until 10:00. THEN went in and crashed. After my shower. We are scheduled to leave at 7:30 in the morning (which I’m trying not to remember was 6:30 AM yesterday). When our boss had called earlier this evening I had mentioned that 7:30 was coming pretty early in the morning. Apparently he went back and checked and realized that it should have said 8:30. Oops! Since we had already told everyone to be ready to go at 7:30, there was not really a way to change at this point.
We also had groceries in another cooler at back and frozen things iced in a Yeti. We had 2 coolers up by the passengers filled with pop and waters. At night we poured out all the melted ice with this little contraption that Nick, the owner made. It’s a pan that catches the water coming out the spickets and then the water goes through a hose out the front door of the bus. Clever!
