Driving South: Day 2

Jen here, again.

The second day of our journey began with a complimentary southern breakfast at the hotel.  I had a bagel (not very southern) and Geoff had waffles, sausage, and a biscuit with gravy.  We were on the road again at 10am.

It was a beautiful day for a drive...sunny and low 70s for most of the day.  We spent the first part of the drive in Virginia which had beautiful mountain views and lots of cattle.  There were more giant crosses too.

We were very excited to reach Tennessee...I've always wanted to go there.  While not as beautiful as Virgina, it was still very pretty, and made for a fun (but very loooong) drive.  It helped that we got to listen to the play by play of all the football games on the radio.  We stopped at the Davey Crockett truck stop for a break and that's where we spotted our first mullet of the trip!  Unfortunately, we weren't stealth enough to get a picture...but it was a good one.  The truck stop had lots of souveniers...I tried to get Geoff to get one of those Davey Crockett hats (the ones with the raccoon tail) but he wasn't going for it. At another rest stop there was a field with lots of people walking their dogs...it made me miss Bandit.  It was around that time that we passed into the Central Time Zone...whoohoo!  We were very excited to gain an hour.


One fun thing about our route (we took 40W through all of TN) is that it took us through 3 major cities of the state:  Knoxville, Nashville, and Memphis.  Knoxville was a lot bigger than I thought it would be and very pretty.  Nashville was pretty too and I'm so excited to stay there on our way home!  We ended up passing through Memphis at about 6:30pm and decided to hit up Beale St for some BBQ dinner.  We parked right across the road from the Mississippi River and the bridge to Arkansas...great view. 

After walking a few blocks we were on Beale St!  It was crazy with lots of neon signs and music coming from every direction.  We picked a restaurant and had some yummy BBQ, cheap beer, and an Elvis impersonator.  It was fun!

 

By the time we left Memphis we were both very tired.  We wanted to make it farther though so we pushed on and are staying 2 hours into Arkansas.  So far I am not too impressed with this state, but we'll see if the sunlight changes my mind tomorrow.  Only 6 more hours of driving until we reach Patrick and Erin!