I see no-one actually saw my last post because I forgot to share on Facebook, so I have just left that at the bottom in case anyone wants to read last weeks post. After Nashville, we decided to cutoff the Natchez Trace and head for the Gulf Coast and spend one glorious shorts day soaking up the sun...The weather has been trending cooler since, with sunshine and cooler days, we still enjoyed the beaches, but just haven't been in sandals and shorts. We touched Flora-bama - making our way to the Gulf Islands National Seashore just inside Florida! At least we can say we made it to Florida.
Then headed for the bright lights of Biloxi Mississippi and onto the Big Easy for a two night stay and romp around the French Quarter. Lots of fun doing a whirlwind tour of New Orleans. We then crossed over the Mississippi for the last time and headed for Texas, stopping along the coast, where the temps are starting to rise again. We took the free ferry across a small channel to Galveston seeing tons of dolphins (although those little buggers are to quick to photograph). We continued Southwest to Corpus Christi passing through lots of small gulf towns, and even more Oil Refineries and chemical plants (most of southeast Texas stinks)!!
We arrived to Rockport (at least the third Rockport we have been to on this trip) and over to Padre Island. Yikes this area has been devastated by Harvey. Most businesses are closed with signs destroyed, buildings ripped apart, and to our amazement debris still scattered on the road and ditches. This hurricane hit three months ago and it looks like it could have been yesterday. Some of the worst areas had boats tipped sideways in the ditches and a huge boat storage facility was ripped in half with boats everywhere. We also saw a lot of people living in RVs and tents. Not a pretty scene for these little beach towns.
We have reached our southern most point and are now heading to San Antonio and soon after to New Mexico...The home stretch to Arizona!!
Blue Ridge Parkway to Nashville Smashville
We left Harper's Ferry West Virginia in search of the scenic route. Boy did we find it when we took the Skyline Dr to Blueridge Parkway. The Skyline Dr follows the mountain tops of the Shenandoah National Park for 100 miles and leads directly to the Blueridge Parkway which winds its way 500 miles through Virginia to North Carolina, dumping out at the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. We stayed on the Parkway for two days, finally jumping on the Interstate on account of darkness. We skipped ahead and picked up the parkway for the last 60 miles and headed over the Great Smoky's. Sharon was not happy when she realized we skipped over Little Switzerland, and I told her we can't go back...I sorta wished we did go back, since it looked like a cool little place. Unfortunately the last day, we lost the sunshine and spent a lot of the day in wet soupy fog. But the Smoky's were still beautiful.
We then headed for Nashville and decided to stay for two nights. We spent the day wandering Honky Tonk land, listening to live music everywhere, morning, noon and night you can find a bar with music bellowing out the doors onto the street. We hit the bright lights of Broadway and then picked up tickets to the Preds. Smashville as they call it was pretty cool, We had a lot of fun, the atmosphere puts Vancouver to shame with amazing chants and free Big Macs and Frosty's coming as Nashville piled up the goals. Love the Goaltender taunts after each goal Holtby Holtby YOU SUCK YOU SUCK...ITS ALL YOUR FAULT ... ITS ALL YOUR FAULT!!! The Canucks fans could use some of this enthusiasm.
We picked up our free Big Macs and Wendy's Frosty's and packed up camp with the intention of hitting the next scenic route the Natchez Trace Parkway, which winds its way from Nashville to Natchez Mississippi. But first we found a Tire shop, they told us we could no longer replace our Good Year Marathons (although they showed one in stock), but said it wasn't available and we would have to upgrade to Good Year Endurance. These are new and improved tires and are definitely a good choice. Given that we couldn't get the exact tire, I decided to upgrade all my tires. We arrived at the tire shop and saw the exact Marathon tire in my size sitting on the wall display. I asked if this was available and they said yep they could fix the one wheel and get us on our way...Well an hour and half later we were rolling out with one new tire instead of all of them. I like this option, since I ultimately want to upgrade to 15 inch tires from the current 14's...However this obviously requires new rims, which is a bit more of a project. I'd like to sell the current wheels, rather than scrap them in a far off city. This gives me the ability to do so...Lets hope this is the last tire issue of the trip...knock on wood!!!
After all this, we were quickly running out of daylight and some nice folks in the tire shop started telling us about great places in Nashville, so we ended up on a side trip for bbq, found a shop that sells cookie dough by the scoop next to the Parthenon...Yeap Nashville has the world's only exact replica of the Parthenon. We then headed back to our exact same campsite for another night.
Oh yeah Florida was a bust as we decided the 1000 miles it will take to get down to Tampa and ultimately Naples didn't make sense and it appears campsites are hard to come by in the sunshine state this time of year, so Mississippi here we come. I'm happy though as we ticked off a bunch of new states and I'm now at 36 (35 is you don't count spending several flight transits in the Dallas Fort Worth Airport). I will be at 40 states by the end of this trip!!! Just 10 more in middle America! Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, etc. are on the list for next time...
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