dispatch from nashville

We started our day in Little Rock with a run on the Arkansas River Trail, a paved pedestrian and bicycle trail that runs for about 12 miles along the Arkansas River. It was hot and humid even though it was only 7:30am, but the trail was really great and lots of friendly people were out and about recreating on it.

The trail left us with a more favorable impression of Little Rock, but it was time to hit the road. We headed east, stopping in Memphis for lunch. Being Father's Day, the cafe we stopped at was very busy so after a long lunch we were back on the road to Nashville.

We got in to Nashville and checked in to The Hutton Hotel, probably the nicest hotel on our travels {although the W Hotel on our next stop should be pretty nice, too}. Mocha loved the room, too; she has been comfortably working on a bone all evening. John and I had dinner at the restaurant in the hotel, the 1808 Grille. The food was delicious, especially the local farm-to-table vegetable side dishes: fingerling potato salad, homemade pickles, and barbecued yellow tomatoes. These veggies were so good, I forgot to snap a photo of them. The dessert was delish, too; strawberry butter cake and peanut butter and chocolate pie, which I did get photos of.

We are pretty tired, so I am calling it an early night. We will get up early for a run down to Centennial Park and/or the Vanderbilt campus. We have decided to stay here for two nights since we have our meeting with Pierce & Co. tomorrow afternoon. So, there'll be another dispatch from Nashville tomorrow!