Saturday, August 20

Our flight out of Nashville wasn't until late this afternoon, so we hung around the resort this morning reading.  At lunchtime we went to the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center which was just across the road.  It is a Marriott, one of the luxury collection I'm guessing, and is reportedly the biggest hotel they have with over 2,000 rooms.  We wandered around trying to find a parking lot that wouldn't cost us $20 for just a couple of hours and finally found one that looked promising although it was labeled for buses only.  There were a fair number of cars though, so we asked some golfers walking through what they could tell us about this lot.  "It's free", said one of them.  Just what we wanted to know so we parked and hiked the long walk to the hotel.  As we approached the entrance we noticed a sign directing "Uber, Lyft and Taxis" to a specific lane.  How advanced.  This hotel really is 3 hotels in one, each with their own registration area.  And each has a beautiful atrium in the middle with ponds, fountains, streams, bridges and thousands of plants.  We decided to head to one of the restaurants, Jack Daniels, for lunch and it took us about 15 minutes just to find it.  I had shrimp and grits, which were very good, and Michael had chittlings (pork rinds) and a bean soup, both of which he enjoyed.  Then it was off to gas up the car and head to the airport which was only a 15 minute drive.  There were thunderstorms in the area, but we left pretty close to ontime.  I was holding my breath that we didn't get struck by lightning, which apparently happens on average to each airplane at least once a year.  Our Alaska Airlines flight was direct to Seattle where we had a 3 hour layover.  I saw online that there was an earlier flight to Redmond, but if we wanted to make the change more than 6 hours before the flight, it would cost $150 each plus the difference in airfare.  The agent suggested we just check when we arrive in Seattle.  We had only about 45 minutes before the earlier flight but for once we lucked out and the two gates were very close.  The gate agent said there was room on the earlier flight and didn't even charge us the $25 fee to change so we were happy campers.  Of course our luggage went on the original flight, but we picked it up the next morning with no problems.  Happy to be back home and with fun memories of Tennessee.