Perpetually out shined by a certain southern city of the same name, Nashville, Michigan, has probably never been on your radar. Like a number of other Michigan communities named after much more recognizable places (e.g. Athens, Holland, Moscow, Paris), the village, which is located in the eastern portion of Barry County, is a tiny, tiny community. But that doesn’t make it any less interesting.
Read MoreWith the largest road atlas money can buy (thanks, grandma) laid out on the kitchen counter and some fancy new highlighters in hand, I began marking points. I marked places where I knew people, drew lines connecting the dots, checked the mileage with Google Maps to make sure I wasn’t planning ridiculously long drives (I max out at about 14 hours), and started feeling giddy.
Read MoreI took two months to travel to 22 states, putting over 8,500 miles on my car. I went to new places with old friends and old places with new friends. Sometimes I drove 14 hours in a day, others maybe one. I listened to hours of podcasts, audio books, and A LOT of music…
Read MoreSt. Louis probably isn't one of the first cities you think of when deciding where you might go on vacation in the U.S. It's close enough to Chicago and Nashville that you might just head to one of those places instead and think nothing of it. That would be fine, of course — those are great places to visit, too — but St. Louis can hold its own just as well.
Read MoreAs the rain continued to threaten on that cloudy Sunday afternoon, there was one more mural other than the dragon in Hillsboro Village that I was intent on seeing. That one can be described by four words alone: "I Believe in Nashville."
Read MoreI awoke Saturday morning and was pleasantly surprised to discover that I hadn't died during the previous evening's shenanigans. Looking around, however, I did notice the yellow mustard stain on my pants, which had been hastily discarded on the floor some eight hours earlier.
Read MoreI don't know why exactly, but we had it in our heads that we were going to leave town at some ungodly hour. And sure enough, there we were, packed and ready to go, backing out of the driveway just after 5 a.m. on Friday morning, Google Maps fired up and pointing us in the right direction.
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