Athens of the South

With the recent weddings in our family, I've had the luxury of seeing a lot of my family this summer, but I haven't been back home in quite some time. Last weekend was my first trip home in months, and the first time I've seen Nashville since the floods. Although the city really bounced back quickly, there are still quite a few things closed or renovating, small reminders that the city hasn't completely recovered from the flood.

Fortunately, most of my family came away from the flood with little to no damage and the lake and rivers are back to normal levels. A small storm blew through our area early last Saturday morning, leaving the rest of the day open for a potential canoe float trip down one of the nearby rivers. Italian and I had originally tossed around the idea of the Caney Fork, but the storm was moving out east, towards the Caney. We decide to stay in town then and helped push off Papa Clover and Little Clover down the Stones River. Italian and I drove off to the take out point and entertained ourselves with some casting. We would have preferred fishing, but the fish were not cooperating, so we "practiced casting" instead. We got in a lot of practice.

From Irish Clover

After a couple of hours, I could make out the canoe rounding the bend. Little Clover gave out the standard Clover whistle, I responded. Both Papa Clover and Little Clover looked a bit tired, but they also looked like they had great time.

From Irish Clover

In addition to canoing, Little Clover asked to visit the Parthenon. Built for the Centinneal celebration in Nashville, the Parthenon is a replica of the actual Parthenon in Greece, and solidified Nashville's growing reputation as the "Atens of the South." Like Athens, the Atens of the South wouldn't be complete without a statue of Athena, all 42 feet of her.

From Irish Clover

To say the statue is huge would be an understatement. She was massive. Little Clover impressed us all with his knowledge of Greek Methology as he talked through the Women in Mythology art exhibit in the lower level of the Parthenon. We have Rick Riordan to thank for that. Little Clover voraciously tore through the Percy Jackson series and requested the Scholastic Mythlopedias so he could cross reference what he was reading. His knowledge and love for the stories shone through as we walked through the Parthenon. Thank you, Rick!