Celebrating 30 in Nashville with Dashville7

I turned 30 in Nashville this April and it was an incredible experience! If you know me, I'm sort of a planner and may bug you to tell me when/what time we are doing things earlier than you may have decided. So naturally in November 2015 I was already sending e-mails to friends and family exploring ideas for a group trip for April 2016. I settled on Nashville initially for two reasons:
a. We couldn't afford New Orleans and Jazz fest, so Nashville being Music City was a great second.
b. I'd never been there!
I don't know where I got the idea that people would travel somewhere for me, but I feel unbelievably lucky that they did. I rounded up a great group: Ursula, Rikka, James and Jess. We booked a house on Airbnb in the neighborhood of East Nashville and as I did more research my reasons included:
c. Jack White's Third Man Records store.
d. Bison and elk at Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area.

Night one - My four travel companions before a big surprise.

To say it started off with a bang is the understatement of my life, there are no words to describe the  big surprise that happened about 2 hours into our stay in Nashville:
1. Ursula, Rikka, James, Jess, and I went to The Crying Wolf, an East Nashville bar, just before midnight to celebrate all of us being together and me turning 30 in a few minutes.

2. I asked Rikka to take some photos of me, Ursula, and Jess being tired and posing.

3. Some dude sat next to me, and I was excited by the local photobomb but uncomfortable by how close he sat.

Look at this local Nashville dude photobombing us...oh wait....(Savva's expression here is priceless, "Why doesn't she care?"

4. We took a couple of photos with this guy.

5. Then I turned around to thank him for being in my photo and realized it was my brother!

Speechless. The power of the mind and being 100% positive for months that my brother could NOT make it to Nashville because he had to work in NYC all weekend. What a liar!

Tthat is how we became Dashville7 and our journey began! You would think traveling with 7 people who barely know each other would have been a little awkward, or possibly a little dramatic, but everyone got along, everyone had fun, and I was in "pinch me" heaven the whole time - I had family and friends while traveling! Of course we barely talked to locals or anyone else, which is something I could not have predicated when planning this trip.
But how lucky were we to all get along and jibe with whatever the plan was!

The first group photo of Dashville7