Antique Archaeology - Nashville

We love to watch the television show Antique Archaeology and last year we drove to LeClaire, Iowa to see their original store and do a little geocaching along the way.  I did a blog post about it here.

 



They have a second store in Nashville, Tennessee and I added a visit there to my list of things to do on our recent trip to Nashville.  I did a blog post about some of that trip last week. 

 

The Nashville store is housed in the former Marathon Automobile plant.  The building itself is a gorgeous two and three story affair made of rustic red brick and galvanized gutters, with original logos and artwork on its face.  Marathon Motor Works was in existence for only a few short years, but during that time they were well known for their unusual practice of engineering and building every car and its components completely in house.  Along the way they developed a reputation for creating cars that were durable and of good quality.  Unfortunately, due to poor management and financial decisions, the company rapidly fell into decline and ceased to exist.  To read more about this short lived innovator, go here.

 

The building itself is a beautiful choice for Antique Archaeology's second location.  It's several blocks off the main drag and we actually drove thru a residential area to get there.  The street and parking lot were lined with cars and there was a steady flow of people going in and out of the store.

Inside was packed, floor to ceiling, with items of all kinds.  Since we are avid fans of the show, we saw several things in the store that we had seen purchased on the show.  Prices are a bit high and we saw more people browsing than actually buying.   There are also many Antique Archaeology souvenir items for sale, like books, tee shirts, mugs etc. 

For anyone who likes to browse antique shops and poke through signs and bikes, vintage clothing, Civil War memorabilia, lighters, lamps, and all things rusty, well then this is the place for you.

My favorite item was the vintage gas pump.  I liked the size, the red color and the rusted exterior of it.

 

We didn't buy anything, but it was great fun to go through the store and check everything out.  Afterwards we grabbed a geocache outside the building called Nashville Pickers.  It was a quick and easy geocache and now we've found a geocache at both locations.

Next up is a blog post about The Country Music Hall of Fame, so please come back.

Lone Star Steamer in LeClaire

We are continuing our tour of LeClaire, Iowa.  So far we've visited Antique Archaeology and The Buffalo Bill Museum.

Our final tourist spot was The Lone Star Steamer which was part of The Buffalo Bill Museum....

The Lone Star was built in 1869 and worked primarily as a towboat.  By the early 1960's it was the last boat of its kind still operating in the United States.  It worked continuously for 98 years until August of 1967 when it failed its Coast Guard inspection and was retired from service. 

The pilot house was a simple affair and lacked the modern electronic aids of today.  The large wooden ships wheel was its only form of control.  It had a device for the captain to communicate with the engineer in the engine room, but there wasn't even any radar and certainly no computers.

The steamer was powered by coal that was shoveled by firemen into the twin, fire tube boilers.  The fireman also had to keep close watch on the pressure gauge and maintain a steady pressure of 240 psi.  The boilers had to be washed and scraped every 2 weeks to remove mud and scale.

This is the paddlewheel off the rear of the steamer....

We got to check out the interior of the steamer.  This was an extremely small sleeping room and had only one small cot in it. 

 

Here's a replica of the steamer.  The Lone Star was built to operate on the upper Mississippi River and could navigate in as little as 4 feet of water.  She is considered the last of her kind in existence in the United States.  It was quite fun to get to climb around on her and explore.

 

 

Before we left to return home we had to stop and grab a couple of geocaches.  We tossed dad out of the car to grab this one....

 

The cache on the river was hard to find because of all the rocks.  We also had to watch our step or we'd end up taking a swim.  But dad managed to come up with it and mom signed us in....

 

 

The cache by the Wayside Chapel was a multi cache and we had to find a clue on one of the buildings that would then lead us to the final location....

 

Let's just say I was glad I didn't have to crawl under here.....

 

But we did find the cache!

 

 

And finally we ended up at the Pleasant Hill School....

 

School wasn't open that day and we were determined to see what was inside....

Not the best view and I was disappointed that we couldn't gain access....

 

And that ends our tour of LeClaire, Iowa.  Visiting the Antique Archaeology store had been on my wish list for awhile, and we had a great time exploring the cute little town while we were there and grabbing a couple of geocaches while we were at it.  We packed a lot of activity into a one day trip.  Next on my wish list is the Antique Archaeology store in Nashville.



Antique Archaeology and a Geocache

Have you ever seen the TV show American Pickers?  Louie and I are addicted to that show.  The home base for the pickers is their store Antique Archaeology in LeClaire, Iowa.  If you look closely at the photo below you will see me sneaking around behind the sign to find a geocache. 

My mom and dad had actually visited the store a couple of years ago and got to meet owner and picker, Mike Wolfe.  Mom said he was a really nice guy.

A couple of weeks ago I got a bug in my butt and decided that I wanted to drive out to LeClaire and see the store.  You know what a road trip means don't you?  Geocaching!!  We tossed the old ball and chain  my mom and dad, in the back of the car and off we drove with our sights set on LeClaire, Iowa.  Of course I picked a couple of geocaches to do along the way.  The first one we did was in Rapids City.

It was early in the morning when we got out of the car to search for the cache.  Just then another car pulled up, a couple got out carrying a GPS, and wouldn't you know it - 2 geocachers from out of town.  It's always fun to meet other cachers on the trail.

We did another couple of geocaches and pulled across the Mississippi river into Iowa.  A quick mile or two down the road and we were in front of the Antique Archaeology store.  It looks exactly like it does on the TV show, but it's a lot smaller in real life than what you think it is.  Even though the store had just opened for the day, there was already a large crowd milling around.

 We saw a lot of items at the store that we had seen Mike and Frank picking on TV. 

The store is just packed with lots of cool things to see.

This Triumph sign was one of my favorite items!

Of course there's a geocache hidden someplace outside the store and of course we found it.  We had to be super stealthy because of all the people, but we did manage to find and sign the cache.  I'm not telling where it was hidden, but I will tell you that the cache location is shown in one of the photos I posted.  Hee hee.....

It was really fun to see the actual Antique Archaeology store and since I wrote Archaeology so many times in the post, I now know how to spell it.  LOL!  Afterwards we headed over to the Buffalo Bill Cody Museum, but I'll save that for another post.

I'm also posting this over at Cache Crazy today for Cache Crazy Tuesday.