| 628 | Earth Day - Nashville | 2012-04-24 |
Saturday was Earth Day, the designated time to honor Mother Earth. For years we have gone to Centennial Park in Nashville to take part in the City's celebration. It has always been a fun and often times crowded event, but his year was different. The weather man did not give us a very good day to celebrate. After a mild winter and spring, we expected at least warm weather for Earth Day, but instead got wet and chilly conditions. We decided to delay our visit until the afternoon, and in the meantime, hope for better weather.
Reading the morning news we discovered the Metro Police were having a paper shredding day. We had lots of old receipts that were not important enough to keep, but were filled with personal information. Several times we had threatened to go to the shredding event, but never weeded through the records to determine what needed to be eliminated. On this rainy day, the sorting project was a good chore. Soon we filled two large boxes with personal papers.
The shredding was at one of the Fair Grounds' parking areas in South Nashville. The Police did a very good job organizing the flow of traffic and we were in and out in minutes. It was so easy, we could not believe we had not done it before. Oh, and yes, they recycle the shredded paper.
At three, we finally decided to go to the Park. It was a cool bike ride, but we were dressed for the weather. We valet parked our rides at the Walk Bike Nashville bike parking compound. Sadly, our two bikes doubled the number of bikes in the valet area.
The weather hurt the event. It was nice to be able to walk around the uncrowded grounds, but we felt sorry for the vendors and workers at the various displays.
Amy did get to ask a plant and garden vendor a few questions about our pot garden (vegetables and herbs grown in pots).
We met and enjoyed talking to Nora with Tennessee Trails and Tennessee Parks and Greenways. We need to attend one of the Tennessee Trails meetings.
Finally we visited our friend Robin at the Tennessee State Natural Areas booth. She had brought in a ringer to attract attention, an owl. Of course everyone was paying more attention to the owl than to the Natural Areas booth, but that was okay.
The Ranger allowed Amy to hold the owl. She was pretty excited.
Whether you attended Earth Day or not, I hope everyone made a renewed commitment to living a greener lifestyle.
Happy Earth Day trails