Another Scavenger Hunt

After doing the downtown Urban Adventure Quest scavenger hunt with the family in October, I knew I wanted to do it with my friends.

We went yesterday. The temperature was supposed to be in the 70's and overcast---perfect! Instead, it was 37 when I left the house. It was around 40 when we got downtown---a little nippy, but since it was sunny, that made a big difference. Never once did I notice the chill once we started.

Here's how it works. First, you have to select your city---they have these all over the country. Then you have to choose a team name. I couldn't really think of anything clever, so I picked "friends forever." That name was taken. Then I picked "just us"---also taken. Finally, I went with "AYMers" feeling pretty certain that would be available. It was. Stephanie had given me a link to a discount code. The scavenger hunt is $50---we got a $10 discount.

We started outside of the Country Music Hall of Fame.

From there, you travel around the city to 17 different locations. According to Nancy's fitbit, we walked 3.5 miles. We took our time and stopped for a drink and live music at Honky Tonk Central.

 This is just one of the dozens of honky tonks around town---most with live music all day and night.

 We probably stayed about a half hour. There was a group of girls celebrating a birthday. They were having a good time for sure!

On another stop, we posed with Bill Monroe. We continued on to Capitol Hill. Nashville has these bronze statues everywhere.

We stopped for lunch at Puckett's Grocery. We picked the perfect time to go downtown. It wasn't all that crowded since we're a little outside the tourist season. There were some. I met a family sporting Mizzou jerseys. They are in town for the Missouri/Vanderibilt game on Saturday. I was glad to see them exploring the city. In fact, we really enjoyed exploring our own city. We walked places I'd never seen before. Nashville really is a pretty place. There is construction going on just about everywhere, but that just helps to keep everything looking nice and fresh. I've had out-of-towners mention before about the cleanliness of Nashville---and that's the truth. It really a nice place. And you don't have to be afraid.

Anyway, it was so  much fun. I'd do it again and again. Since I had done it once, I was the navigator. You do everything on your phone. Really, with a couple exceptions, I didn't remember the answers anyway. Our final score was 495 points out of a possible 555. We had one glitch that cost us 20 points. We kept entering the correct answer only for the app to tell us we were wrong. When it told us the correct answer, that's the one we had chosen! Then there was another time that I didn't realize that I asked for a hint. That cost us too.

Everyone loved it. It was so nice to do something fun right before all the hustle, bustle and WORK of the holidays! In  fact, I got up at 4 a.m. to get everything ready for Stephanie's birthday dinner last night. I had already cooked the chicken and made the cupcakes the night before. But, I knew that I wouldn't fully enjoy myself on the scavenger hunt if I knew I had so much to do when I got home. Cooking for 9 people is double cooking---with all these boys, one recipe doesn't cover it!

We played games after dinner and then moved on to poker in the rec room. I was so tired (me without a nap cannot last too long). I called it quits at 9:30. Clean up was pretty quick. Butch wanted me to leave it. Uh, NO! After 46 years, he should know better than that. There's absolutely no way do I want to wake up to a mess!

While cooking the night before, I tried out the red velvet martini that I was hoping to duplicate from our D.C. trip. The first one was a total fail. It tasted disgusting. I played around with it and came up with this. It was delicious!

I have another one up my sleeve for Thanksgiving!

PS One last thing. When we were in DC, I started referring to the family by generations to differentiate since just about everyone is adults now. The "youngin's" take offense to being called "kids!" Turns out, no one likes "the 3rd generation" either. In fact, when I sent out the itinerary for Thanksgiving, Justin told Mindy, "I'm kind of confused about this generation thing. Which one am I."

So much for new ideas!!