I’ll preface this post by stating that Lisa and I are generally not fans of country music. With that said, we both thought it would be interesting to visit the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. When in Rome, right?

We left Cumberland Mountain early and had an easy 2-hour drive to Music City USA. We weren’t concerned about parking because the Opry shares parking lots with a huge convention center as well as a large shopping mall. We parked Usain, turned the A/C on for the cats, took some quick photos outside, and then headed inside the Opry house for a backstage tour.

Opry Backstage Tour

The tour started with a very well done introductory video that helped us appreciate what we were about to experience. We weren’t familiar with the famous “circle” on the stage or how big of deal it is to perform here and more importantly become of “member” of the Opry. I later admitted to Lisa that I didn’t know the couple that served as hosts for the video. Google told us it was Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, names we recognized but faces we did not. As I said, we aren’t big CW fans.

The tour continued by allowing us to see where the performers enter through the back, where they pick up their fan mail. Each member has a post office box for mail addressed to them at the Opry, and Dolly Parton’s box is consistently the most full. Then we were able to see all the various dressing rooms (each had unique names and was decorated differently). After that we entered the “family room” (what other productions call the green room), back stage, and finally onto the stage. After taking turns getting our pictures by a professional photographer in the famous circle, we proceeded out to the audience area to see how the stage looks from the 4,400-seat auditorium.

All in all we thoroughly enjoyed the tour and would recommend it to others even if country music isn’t your genre of choice.

Gaylord Opryland Resort

A short walk from the Opry took us over to the Gaylord Opryland Resort. This is an upscale hotel, resort, and convention center. I had to take a peek at the room rates — $324/night for a typical hotel room on a weekday, add another $100 for the same room with an interior view, and then on up from there. The hotel features the largest indoor atrium that we’ve ever seen and is absolutely incredible with indoor fountains, waterfall, and exotic plants and trees. There’s also a 4-acre waterpark exclusive to guests. Workers throughout were busy decorating the place for Christmas. It’s truly a dome world complete with full size buildings plus shopping and restaurants within an environmentally controlled enclosure. Pictures don’t do it justice. We just strolled around and marveled at it all.

Opry Hills Mall

To get more steps in, we headed out of the resort and walked over to the Opry Hills Mall, which sits on the site of a former Nashville amusement park. It’s a very nice, but typical larger mall with all the shops and restaurants one would expect. It did have entertainment venues like a Dave and Busters, escape rooms and a game show contest. The most interesting thing to me was the Star Wars themed car we saw in the parking lot.

Nashville KOA

A KOA is our campground for the next 2 nights in Nashville. It’s located within the city near the Grand Ole Opry and is by far the largest campground we’ve ever stayed at except for maybe Isla Blanca in South Padre in terms of number of sites. They have a schedule of events throughout the day much like a cruise liner and even live music in the evenings. We ended our touristy day by taking a stroll throughout the grounds and taking care of the dirty laundry that has been filling up Usain’s closet this past week.

Trip Update

After our unexpected delay in Davenport, Iowa and the horrendous I-70 traffic through Ohio, we’ve been having a wonderful trip and are finally getting to see Tennessee, which was our original destination. From here it’s down to Memphis and then we’ll slowly make our way back home by the end of the month. Here’s a look of our 2025 Fall Trip thus far.