East Nashville and Stones River National Battlefield - Thursday, April 11, 2019

Today's 5k (3.1 miles) Volksmarch is around a neighborhood in East Nashville, Tennessee. The walk sign-in point was at a skateboard shop. From there, we drove a few blocks to the walk start at Edgefield Baptist Church. This is described as an "Urban hike."

To us, it is fun to see all the different types of architecture, flowers in bloom, and cute shops, or murals in any given neighborhood. So let's take a walk.

Edgefield Baptist Church - our start point.

The fire of 1916 destroyed over 600 structures.

Homes in the neighborhood.

Cherry blossoms.

This walk had some hills so we got a little more exercise. We have to start getting in shape for the waterfall and Appalachian Trail hikes coming up in June!

That's a lot of chimneys!

A beautiful Craftsman home.

Every few blocks there was a sign with a map and the history of that neighborhood. 

A great color scheme on this home.

There used to be an amusement park in this area.

Mural in an alley.

This business area had shops in an alleyway.

The main focus of this walk is the neighborhood, so there are a lot of house photos. My favorites are in here.

Our checkpoint was in this park.

"Safe Walk" designation.

Nice flowers.

One of the neighborhoods we were in.

East End United Methodist Church.

A very well-made home.

I guess we were following some car routes.

The mural below on the side of Fanny's House of Music is awesome. It depicts influential women guitarists, such as Joan Jett, Dolly Parton, Taylor Swift, Suzie Quatro, Maybelle Carter, Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Loretta Lynn, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Bonnie Raitt, and more.

Close-up of Joan Jett on the mural.

Another colorful mural.

The next three photos are of the "gargoyle house" that did not get destroyed in the 1916 fire in this neighborhood.

The gargoyle.

The gargoyle house.

The gargoyle house.

With that, we are done walking in East Nashville. It was a good walk, but the instructions need updating. They refer to checkpoints where there aren't any questions to answer, and there was one place in particular with an error in the directions which caused us to go up a steep hill and a few blocks out of our way. Luckily, we found the error before we went too far.

Because we only did a 5k walk, we had time for another activity today. But first, we needed lunch. From East Nashville, we drove to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, to visit Stones River National Battlefield. We didn't know the area and were looking for a place to eat. There are many choices of places to eat in Murfreesboro. If you can't make up your mind, you could be in trouble. 

We were pulling into a strip mall and saw "Chicken Salad Chick." It sounded interesting, so that's where we ended up. We are not sorry. I would say it is a highlight of our lunch choices on this vacation. The menu is all about chicken salad in many different iterations. You could get curry flavor, classic, old south, lemon basil, Barbie-Q, Dixie Chick, Fruity Fran, Buffalo Barclay, etc. You can choose your chicken salad as a scoop (no bread) or as a sandwich. It comes with one side (we chose the grape salad--mmm) and a cookie.

Chicken Salad Chick "Secret" Recipe.

My lunch!

The inside.

After our satisfying lunch, we headed out to Stones River National Battlefield. This was the site of a three-day battle during the Civil War. In that time, 23,525 were killed, wounded, or captured. The Union had 13,259 casualties, and the Confederates lost 10,266.

We did a self-guided walking trail through the battlefield. A little bit of it was on a paved path, but the majority of it was walking through ankle-deep grass. All I could think of was ticks. Ugh.

Part of the battlefield.

The cannons are pointed to the woods where
troops were gearing up to attack.

Battlefield walk.

Click on photo to enlarge. 

For a more detailed telling of Stones River, please refer to Bob's blog, Civil War Musings. I mostly took photos. Bob did the heavy lifting of writing about it.

Hazen's Brigade Memorial

Hazen's Brigade Memorial.

We walked in weeds along the edge of the road
to Stones River National Cemetery. Only Union
soldiers could be buried here.

Stones River National Cemetery

We also drove a few miles to Fortress Rosecrans and Redoubt Brannan to learn more about the defense of the railroad lines.

Be sure to read this about Redoubt Brannan!
(Click photo to enlarge.)

Fortress Rosecrans.

Today we learned about East Nashville, and about another part of the Civil War at Stones River. I also learned I need to take a shower as soon as we get home from walking in the woods or grasses. I found two ticks on myself this evening, had to remove one with tweezers. So gross! I HATE ticks!

Anyway, tomorrow we move from Seven Points Corps of Engineers campground to Cedar Creek COE campground about 14 miles away. It should be a restful day.