Wait, H4M, you mean you don't have a cat-walker for your cats?
Wait, H4M, you mean you don't have a cat-walker for your cats?
Finally on the way. Waited one more day to leave, feeling SO SO guilty about the cats, but then realized that was one day less spent in Yellowstone with DH and DS and it was time to git.
Ten hours of driving later, I'm in Knoxville, TN. What a HUGE state Virginia is, driving edge to edge north to south. Took me most of the day to finally escape it's clutches.
Route 81 is fast, but so monotonous. Today a blur of white lane markers, white trucks, and towering white (cumulous?) clouds. After the first hour driving was never out of sight of foot hills then the east coast version of mountains, including, in the distance, the Great Smoky Mountains.
Signs for northern and central VA's genteel vineyards gave way by the end of the day to billboards for distillery tours- free samplings of "bourbon, whiskey, and shine."
Favorite signs of the day: "Huddle House--open 24 hours," and "Hungry Mother State Park."
Tomorrow- wherever 10-11 hour drive on route 40 from Knoxville takes me.
PS. I'm adding to my Mesa itinerary a drive from Mimi's Cafe to TA's house, to see how long it takes (re Jan 22).
Pic....1 mile into Tennessee
I remember on one trip to Ohio getting off the freeway just south of Nashville, I never wanted to leave, so freaking pretty! 
Hey, you were in my part of the world, with Huddle House and Hungry Mother and the giant guitar. Safe travels!!Finally on the way. Waited one more day to leave, feeling SO SO guilty about the cats, but then realized that was one day less spent in Yellowstone with DH and DS and it was time to git.
Ten hours of driving later, I'm in Knoxville, TN. What a HUGE state Virginia is, driving edge to edge north to south. Took me most of the day to finally escape it's clutches.
Route 81 is fast, but so monotonous. Today a blur of white lane markers, white trucks, and towering white (cumulous?) clouds. After the first hour driving was never out of sight of foot hills then the east coast version of mountains, including, in the distance, the Great Smoky Mountains.
Signs for northern and central VA's genteel vineyards gave way by the end of the day to billboards for distillery tours- free samplings of "bourbon, whiskey, and shine."
Favorite signs of the day: "Huddle House--open 24 hours," and "Hungry Mother State Park."
Tomorrow- wherever 10-11 hour drive on route 40 from Knoxville takes me.
PS. I'm adding to my Mesa itinerary a drive from Mimi's Cafe to TA's house, to see how long it takes (re Jan 22).
Pic....1 mile into Tennessee
Woohoo on the road finally! That guitar is awesome.
Can't wait for tomorrow's travel update, heck, you may be near Texas by nightfall.
. And...what IS a Huddle House???
Thank you, it is beautiful here. I try not to take it for granted, but sometimes I do because it's so familiar and normal to me. I was born and raised here and moved back here after a few years in Maryland. If only we were closer to the ocean I would be in heaven. But as you noticed Virginia spans quite a distance and it would take me a long time to drive to the coast. Whereas in Maryland we didn't have the beautiful mountains but we were only a couple of hours from the shore.Thank you! BTW, you live in a beautiful part of the world.
In Texas by nightfall??? LOL! Heck, I drove FIFTEEN hours today, and just made it over the border into Oklahoma.
Of course, it didn't help that when I started off from Knoxville TN this AM (7:30, rush hour?) I ran smack into the nightmare of route 40 being closed in both directions because of an accident. Took me an hour and a half to get out of town. On the other hand, I had lots of the occasion to wander-drive side streets in town looking for a way out, which was interesting up to a point, especially when I was proposed to in the parking lot of a convenience store in which I hoped to buy a map (I'm old fashioned that way), the same store owned by an Indian who walked out of his store with me to explain in great and accurate (thankfully) detail how to detour .
The drive between Knoxville and Nashville on 40 is beautiful, minus the jarring brief sight of the Oak Ridge nuclear power plant right in plain sight, on the Clinch River. Saw lots of signs for the Opry going through Nashville, but hit it at lunch hour with mega construction on 40, so it went by in a bit of a blur.
Next up, Memphis, where I really wanted to stop because of Neesaki's lovely tip about great BBQ. The morning hours lost kept throwing off timing, though, and I was nearing Memphis not until around 3:30, getting close to rush hour, when boom! Major thunderstorm, couldn't see more than a few dozen feet in front of me, had to pull off to wait it out. By then needed to scram before the traffic hit in earnest. Onwards to Little Rock, Arkansas.
Have to say I thought it pretty funny to see a GIGANTIC vote for Trump billboard right smack there in Clinton land. Not trying to be political, just commenting on the sheer audacity of the thing, lol.
My top picks for today's park names : Frozen Head State Park (TN) and Frog Suck State Park, Arkansas.
Finally Registered - I was hoping on surprising you, because Im ending up travelling through OKC alone after all, but I'll be going through tomorrow early AM. I'm in Roland, Oklahoma now, right across from a Cherokee casino. A Cherokee truck driver here (in the convenience store) asked me to go gambling with him tonight, lol.
After 15 hours of driving all I want to do is feel cold (100 degrees today!!) and to get some sleep.
If I drove straight to Mesa from here, still 1,100 miles away.
PS to y'all southerners. I haven't trekked through the south in many years. Being here makes me feel like such a Yankee. I've encountered such really warm, nice, helpful people everywhere, but I definitely am aware of being far away from my home in the north.
Listening to local radio is a part of that. I tuned into someone mid speech saying Phillip so and so was comparable to a Nazi officer who killed millions of Jews, and I'm thinking- wth? Who is he talking about??? And a sentence later, this feller is saying that telling folks in (didn't catch where) that homosexuality was acceptable was the equivalent of mass murder.
No offense to anyone, but YIKES!!! Turned that channel lickety split. :O
Should be in New Mexico by tomorrow night. Till then.
I waved to you as I drove by, at exactly 9:22AM. The tall gray glass building, right?
Downtown OKC via 40 was a shock to the syztem. I'd been idly driving on a peaceful, lovely rolling hills I- 40 for a couple of hours, then wham. First the air force base seemed gargantuan, and then, ooh la la, the super sized everything for the next dozen miles, including 6 lanes of traffic, and those overpasses everywhere, like a threads in a giant spiderweb. I felt positively Lilliputian.
. Who needs extra gas cans when one has a Prius? My best MPG on this trip was 67. Wow. I've driven over 2,000 miles and have only filled up 4 times, with nearly 400 miles left in the tank at the moment. And the cost of gas keeps going down as I've gone west. The lowest I've seen was $1.74, somewhere back there in Texas.
Changed plans...it's too HOT to be meandering much on foot today, so am in Snowflake (lol that name right now), headed towards Mesa via the Salt River Canyon road.
Last chance for any look-it-up while in Mesa requests
I'm in Globe, AZ for the night, which is about an hour and a half east from Mesa. I'll go to Mesa tomorrow morning, fairly early. I was hoping to be there around 5:30pm to check out the amount of day light on the bathroom side of the house, but am not going to idle away a day for that. There's hope for me yet.
I can't believe I'm almost there. Can't wait to search for hidey parking places near TA's house.
