Where In the USA Are Jim and Sandy?

It has been quite an exciting summer for Jim and I. As you know, Jim has been working in Golden Colorado at the Coors plant since February. His schedule since May has been 4 days at Coors and then he flies home for 4 days. This schedule has allowed us to do some pretty fun traveling. So for the next few posts I'm going to allow y'all to come along and see what we've been up to. We'll start our travel in Nashville. You know I'm always looking out for the best airfare price, so a trip popped up from Nashville to South Bend, IN. Since the flight was an early one, and we live 3 hours away, Jim and I decided to stay overnight in Nashville and spend the day. Nashville is such an interesting town. We really need to spend a lot more time there. So many things to see and do that it was hard to choose which attractions we wanted to see. We started our day at Belle Meade plantation. This plantation was around during the Civil War era and it was pretty interesting to tour.

It always amazes me when I see images like the one above. This is a picture of the dairy and behind it is one of the slave cabins. Being a girl from the "North" I never really appreciated the depth of what our country went through during the Civil War. But being on the actual grounds of a plantation and seeing the slave cabins it really brought history alive for me.

Since we were in the Country Music Capital, we decided to visit the Grand Ole Opry. Opryland encompasses a huge area. They have a mall, an enormous hotel and then the Grand Ole Opry itself. It was pretty impressive.

Since there were no shows at the Grand Ole Opry the night we were there, we decided to see a "Pickin and Grinnin" show. It was kinda fun. Okay, maybe a little hokey too, but hey, we're in Nashville!

Next morning Jim was off to Denver and I was off to South Bend to begin another adventure. My parents picked me up in South Bend (Kalamazoo is about an hour away) and I spent the fourth of July weekend with them. Had a lot of fun. Went to the Balloon Festival with my sister Pat and watched an airshow. The Air Force Thunderbirds were there and Pat and I got all their autographs. (I can just see Chuck and Sara rolling their eyes :), but hey, we enjoyed it)

So four days have passed and it's time for Jim to come home. He flies into South Bend, we rent a car and off we go to another adventure. Our Lake Michigan adventure. Since Jim travels a lot and stays in hotels, he is a platinum member of Holiday Inn. They have a beautiful Holiday Inn in St Joseph, MI right on Lakeshore Blvd and overlooking Lake Michigan. We always get a room upgrade when we stay here because of Jim's member status. This time was no exception. We received a whirlpool suite. When I say whirlpool I mean a huge one inside the room. When I say suite, I mean large, very large. It was almost the size of our apartment. Stacy and the boys came to visit the first two days and we had so much fun playing in the pool and going to the beach. Here are a few pictures of Grandpa and his boys.

Preston, floating in the hot tub in our room.

After Stacy and the boys left, Jim and I enjoyed laying out in the sun at the beach, eating at a sidewalk cafe overlooking the water and shopping in the town.