Blogs from Tennessee, United States, North America

This is our last full day of vacation. ( I don’t count driving eight hours home as vacation really.) It was a lovely day in the high 60s and sunny. We went for breakfast to a nearby restaurant called the Frothy Monkey. And then we walked to the country music Hall of Fame. I believe we were there for the 11:15 entrance and stayed 4 hours. It was really very interesting, with lots of displays and videos. We rented the audio things. It was interesting to see who was in this Hall of Fame as well as the rock ‘n’ roll Hall of Fame. We then walked to a coffee shop and had really tasty coffee called Dancing goats. It was very smooth. Then we did a little bit of walking across the Cumberland river where ... read more

Day one had us driving through Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi on our way to Memphis, Tennessee. Lunch was courtesy of Buccee's because that is the only way to start a road trip! The drive was easy and we had great weather until we hit Memphis. Due to some sportsball game being on, Scott stayed at the hotel with Millie (our dog) while James and I went on an adventure. About 15 minutes away, in Bellevue, is Bellevue Baptist Church. It is HUGE and not easily missed. They offer a large, indoor playground that is free for anyone to come play. It was a great way for James to run off some energy. All in all a successful, albeit not super exciting day. ... read more

DAY 14 Ian's bike would not start this morning. It has done it once before. It will start with a tow which we did and discovered it will also start by by-passing the solenoid by a screwdriver across the terminals. We assumed because of this it was probably a faulty solenoid. While this was going on beside the road, Brenton noticed his front tyre was half deflated. He changed the tube but noticed the tyre wouldn't bead properly on the rim. He decided it would probably pop out while riding so we got going. Once again great gravel tracks through forests some gnarly, rocky & testing and some fast gravel roads. Woopdies & thick gravel in places kept us on our toes. We stopped for brunch after 100kms at a traditional American diner. After this break ... read more

Here it is, the middle of September, a year since we left Lynden with an RV in tow, and I haven’t posted anything here since May, just after we finished becoming Texas residents. It’s time to get back and catch up to the story. Since leaving Livingston, Texas, we’ve visited friends and toured all over, with stops in Austin and Fort Worth, Texas, Colbert, Durant, and McAlester, Oklahoma, Joplin, Branson, and St Charles, Missouri, Santa Claus and Florence, Indiana, Knoxville, Tennessee, and Toccoa and Augusta, Georgia. Then, because we plan to spend winter back in Yuma, we started back west, with a stop in Greenville, South Carolina because that’s an area we’ve considered as a possibility for the day we decide to stop being full time in the RV. We continued westward through Knoxville again and ... read more

What has happened to America's highways? Maybe I grew accustomed to traveling along the same road for the past year with only a smattering of traffic and the typical amount of road work that one expects over a year's time. But today, I discovered a new kind of hell and it was one of the reasons I hesitated to take a road trip this week to begin with. Let me start out by saying that I have driven this route multiple times and have never encountered the absolute lack of concern for those of us trying to get from point A to point B. Throughout much of a well-known corridor in my traveling experience, the main culprits today were Atlanta, Chattanooga, and Nashville. I would normally recommend avoiding the corridor on I-24 between Nashville and Chattanooga ... read more