July 2: Crook & Chase Show

This was all we did today. Stood in line for 30 minutes in the heat - some shade - to see the production of a live TV show. Pretty interesting. We practiced knowing the hand signals for clapping and practiced clapping. There's a guy called Bob who lets everyone know the countdown to the start after each commercial and then keeps track of the time for each interview on little cards, in 30 second intervals, that only Crook & Chase and the audience can see. He's behind the guest. Apparently each interview is allowed 4 minutes but of course it's hard to shut some of these people down in the time. Then Bob is back there swinging his finger in the air to signal they need to hurry up. The guests were Josh Turner, one of Larry's favorites, Mark Chestnutt and, for you viewers of America's Got Talent, last year's winner, ventriloquist Terry Fator. I'd never heard of him but he was extremely talented and very funny. He's also signed a hundred million dollar contract for 5 years at one of the big casinos in Las Vegas with an option for another 5 years for 110 million. The guy is really good.

This was called "live-to-tape". In other words, they aren't going to edit any of the video - it goes on as it was shot. Photos were only allowed after the taping. This particular show will be shown on the RFD network tomorrow at 8 pm and Saturday at 6 pm. We won't be seen but you 'll get to see a 100 million dollar ventriloquist.

After leaving Nashville, we drove into Mt. Juliet for dinner. Larry had eaten at O'Charlies when he was in Mississippi on business. He really like it so that's where we went. Larry had his usual steak. I had a grilled chicken breast based in chili & lime sauce. Really good. The topper of the dinner was the Oooey Gooey Carmel Pie. Graham cracker crust, carmel filling, whipped cream - all topped with pecans and chocolate chips. Required lots of bike riding and walking when we got back to camp.

Finally got a photo of one of the little Tufted Titmouses (mice?) hanging on my window. Got it this morning before we left. Don't know why they do this but each day several of them land here and stare in at us.





We head out tomorrow morning for Pigeon Forge. There's lots to do there and I've already looked - there's lots of places to eat there. Many tourist's types of things to do too. Not sure what we're going to do but the town has a big 4th celebration all day. Really looking forward to that. My biggest problem is that I don't know what my connection signal will be there. It's been really great here. I've uploaded 3 pictures in under 1 minute at this camp ground. Some places have taken as much as 5 minutes to load one--and that's if the computer maintains contact. So if I don't blog every night or two, you'll know that the signal is not good and the camp ground doesn't have wi-fi. My signals will be worse later on when we go to Kentucky. We'll really be in the boonies there and not close to any large towns at all. Guess we'll see how well Sprint works in the woods.