Girls weekend in Nashville with an unexpected ending!!!

Oh, what a weekend! My girls weekend was beyond fun. We laughed until we cried and from the moment Sally got there, it was like we’d never been apart. We had the best time, and the weekend couldn’t even be dampened (hahaha) by the horrendous rains, flooding and almost getting stranded in the city.

For those who don’t know, we went to Nashville and we barely made it out. The devastation there is indescribable and it’s incredible today to see pictures of places we were standing Friday night completely submerged in water. Our day Sunday went absolutely NOTHING like we planned but thank the Lord we made it home safely (even if it took 13 hours, instead of 8!!!)!!

When Sally arrived Friday, we decided to hit up all of our outdoor destinations because of Saturday’s forecast. So, our first stop was downtown to the Hermitage Hotel. We’d been told they had a great lunch and that the men’s restroom was a sight to see. They have someone who will take you into the restroom. We didn’t get to stay in there long as some man was coming into use it (I mean, really – didn’t he know we were sight seeing?) Anyway, it wasn’t so impressive – it was black and teal and also had a shoe shining station. After that we just explored some around downtown Nashville. We peeked in the Wildhorse Saloon and had some good picture opportunities there! Iva was rocking out with toy guitar that doubled as a drink container. The guy working there told us it held 80 ounces! Wow!We also stopped to let Iva peruse some cowboy boots. They had a ton in here and were all super $$$$!! I sent Zach a text with a picture of a pair that were $1,995 and asked if I could get them! :) Needless to say, I didn’t… After leaving downtown, we headed to explore a little more and then set out to find a gelato shop. If you haven’t ever had gelato, well, then I feel sorry for you! (just kidding… kind of) I loved it when we were in Rome and I worked with these two right after going to Europe so they knew of my love for the stuff. It was fun getting to share it with them!!!! That night we went to dinner at The Melting Pot. Oh.my.word. I had heard it was great, but it was so beyond that! We had such a great time that night. We laughed and talked and ate to our hearts’ content!!!!! One of the reasons I love these two so much is because of how we can all laugh together. Our senses of humor just click and we are all just a little bit goofy. Case and point: top left picture: the waitress told us how many minutes to cook our meats and they took it seriously!We had planned to spend Saturday exploring our hotel, the Opryland, which is sadly now under water and closed indefinitely. We spent the last night they were open there. This place was absolutely gorgeous and it has been so sad to see what happened to it just a day after we left.

After exploring our hotel, we spent the afternoon at the Opry Mills mall, which I can assume is also under water. We had another fun dinner (mmmmmmmmmmmm!) We got some dessert at our hotel and when we settled into our room, most of the area was in a tornado warning. We heard some reports of flooding and decided we should probably move up our departure time. I’m so thankful we did.

After waking up and checking the highway dept. website, it appeared that I-40 was not flooded and was passable. Sally knew her interstate was closed but thankfully her alternate route was not too far out of her way. We also checked with the concierge who confirmed I-40 was ok. I’ll just go ahead and say it wasn’t. Iva and Sally went to get the cars and I waited with our stuff. When I saw this, I realized it might be worse than we thought… It poured buckets from sometime early Saturday morning until Sunday afternoon… Shortly after leaving, we came upon a dip in the road and saw about 1/4 mile of backed up traffic on the other side. It wasn’t long until we came to the same on our side. Part of the road was flooded so we had to get off the exit ramp and get back on. It took us 45 minutes to go 6/10 of a mile. We’d barely been on when we found the same thing. The difference here was we saw cars coming back down off the on ramp. We turned off and headed the way the gps said. We were in an area called Bellevue. There was no electricity and a lot of water. We could see the interstate and thought we were good…. until we got close enough to see that under the interstate there was probably 10 –15 feet of water. We pulled over a minute and I was able to catch this picture. I started getting slightly worried at this point. We thought we’d head back to I-65 and just go south into Alabama. However, every route we tried, we had to turn around because the roads were impassable. It felt like water was closing in on us from all directions. We even went around trees that were down in the road! We found a gas station with electricity and praise the Lord, a guy that I asked directions for got us safely back to I-65. Almost three hours after we left, we were still in Nashville. And we found it humorous to call Sally and inform her of that! :) We ended up having to go south into Alabama.. Didn’t think we’d be there – ha! We also had a giggle fit when we passed the sign into Mississippi because with all the emotion and anxiety we didn’t even realize from the map. We also came upon some flooding in a small Mississippi town, so after all of our detours and delays and heavy rain for most of the day, we finally made it home 13 hours after we started! I am so thankful we got out when we did because if we’d waited just a couple hours longer, we would probably still be there. We had no clue when we picked Nashville or this particular weekend that we’d witness such an event.  Here are some pics of flooding we saw on the way home. As desperate as we felt for a moment, our problems were NOTHING compared to what the people in Tennessee are going through. Many of the people there who have damaged homes did not have flood insurance and they are going to receive no help.

I saw this video and it just made me so sad. This place was so beautiful. A lot of the damage was in the Cascades where we stayed. I also can’t imagine the number of people just from here who are going to be out of work.

Please be in prayer for all of the people in Tennessee affected by this.

Iva and Sally – I had the BEST time with you two! I’m SO glad we did this. It was so much fun and what an experience to live through! I’m so blessed to have you as friends! Next time let’s end with a little less excitement! :)