A wedding, a funny named town and a flood…

Ronny and I took a little vacation this weekend (took advantage of a holiday exclusively to Nebraska – Arbor Day with Friday off) and flew to Nashville, Tennessee. We didn’t get to see much of the city, but drove by the Grand Ole Opry, so that certainly made our day!

Our friend, Matt, who went to grad school with me, now lives north of Nashville and was going to the same wedding we planned on for our grad school friend, Cora, in Paoli, Indiana. So he graciously let us stay with him Friday at his way cute cabin just north of Nashville in Franklin, Kentucky. I can’t believe how many trees were there and how curvy and hilly the roads are! So we cooked out with his friends and girlfriend, Nicole – who goes to Vandy – and even shot off some fireworks. :)

On Saturday, we made the trek to Paoli (NW of Louisville) for the wedding. We made it just in time and just as the rain stopped for the wedding. Here is our grad school friend, Robin, who was a bridesmaid. I love the purple dresses and beautiful flowers!

Here is the beautiful bride making her way into the tent:  

Everything is green there and The Ranch was a great location. :)    

 

Then the reception started:

And a funny story. The neighboring town to Paoli was called French Lick. It is actually the hometown of basketball player, Larry Bird! Here is the scoreboard that was in Larry’s high school gym!

French Lick is actually a little famous place that Al Capone used to come and stay…aka hideout. The Walnut Lodge on The Ranch was built in 1919 from Walnut logs as a private retreat and hunting lodge for Ed Ballard, hotel and casino operator. The old lodge had a beautiful arrangement of furniture like iron beds, oak desks, a huge dining room table, and game room that Capone used to stay at and people can still stay in it now and we ate breakfast there with the family.

All the locals didn’t know why it was called, French Lick, and it really made us giggle. Then these firemen showed up to make sure the barn was to code…and they had French Lick on their sleeves. So I tried to sneak a picture. :)

 

Here was the K-State grad student gang! It was so awesome we could all be there. Kate, Robin, Matt, Cora, me and Kiel.

When in Manhattan, we would join in with the Line Dancing Club, which I blogged about here…so of course we had to dance to some Copperhead Road!

   

The rest of the wedding was great and we were the last ones to leave. :)
!   Coming home the next day was an adventure for sure. We knew it would be raining the whole drive back to Nashville, but didn’t know HOW much rain!

This was a field right outside of town full of water:

This was NOT a field…it was right after an exit and was covering the roads all the way up to the interstate.

This was right after the exit…the water nearing the interstate. 

This was the view from the air…I wish the other pictures turned out because there were several roads and buildings under water. We were blessed that Matt got us to the airport just before they closed the road to the airport….by the time we got to Nashville, there were several other roads closed in the southwest part of the city. Our plane was delayed and we had to catch a different plane, but finally made it back to Omaha at 10 that evening.

What a wild adventure…but I was just so glad I got experience it with my hubby!