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Turkey Day! Fun fact, this was our second Nashville Thanksgiving. I’m sure my youngest doesn’t even remember the first one as he was probably in diapers. My younger brother Dave made it to Nashville the evening prior, but because I’m an old man, I was soundly sleeping when he arrived. When my youngest brother Jonathan and his wife made it to Nashville we did all the usual catch up family stuff, but my kids were growing restless and needed something to kill the time before eating at 5pm. So, my parents treated me, my wife, and my kids to this Christmas event at the Opry Mills Hotel.
It was pretty cool. What wasn’t pretty cool was driving an RV as the family car and parking it, but other than that the Opry did it right. The package my parents paid for included some sort of Toy Story Mission to Save Christmas experience. It also included tubing, yes actual tubing which was actually a blast. And finally it included this kiddie Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer scavenger hunt or at least everyone thought it was a kid thing.
We started this scavenger hunt at 2pm leaving us with plenty of time to get home for dinner at 5pm. It all started off simple. Simple clues to find obviously hidden objects. That all changed with the 4th clue and so did my even keeled demeanor. The clue was easy enough, but they HID the thing you had to find really well. If I didn’t get lost looking for it, I would’ve said they didn’t hide a clue. As I found this impossible clue, I spied my wife chatting with a mother and son. They asked if we needed help to which she said, we were now good. They then said, “You should stop now. It does not get any easier from here.”
We did not stop AND it did not get any easier from there. As the clock struck 5pm, we were stuck on the final clue. Honestly, we roamed the place dozens of times in search of this clue. Finally we asked for help. Thankfully we did because we never would have found it.
Running back to the check in desk, we claimed our grand prize… a coloring book. The most well deserved coloring book ever. I will never use it as it is hanging in my office as a trophy of triumph for an impossible scavenger hunt.
Speeding back to my sisters house is the RV, we were just in time to being extremely late to a very delicious Thanksgiving dinner. But that scavenger hunt though. It was no joke.
And neither was the drive back to Massachusetts which was going to start in the morning.
LeRoy J. Watkins III 