Yes, you're right. I admit it - it is mildly disgraceful that we never finished blogging about our road trip. It's high time we finished it. So here it is...Tennessee.
September 20, 2011
We woke up in Asheville and had a decent little breakfast courtesy of the Country Inn and Suites. After that we packed up our bags, checked out of the hotel and headed to the car. We got all of our bags wedged into their designated places in the trunk - we got faster at reloading the trunk each day. By the end we had it down to a science.
It was gray and cloudy out that morning and it had obviously rained during the night so I decided we should recoat all of the windows with Rain-X before we headed out. I LOVE Rain-X. It is amazing. I grew to love it even more after Jiffy Lube replaced my old windshielf wipers with the WORST wiper blades ever manufactured on earth. Granted, Jiffy Lube HAD given me the option to buy the more expensive wiper blades...but I said no, thanks I will take the cheaper ones. I just didn't realize that "cheaper" meant "will not work at all." Seriously, my five-year-old wiper blades that they replaced were better than the new ones that they gave me. The new ones just sort of smeared the water around and made it even harder to see than it was before. It would probably have been safer for me to roll down my window and stick my head outside to see, than it would have been for me to use those wiper blades. However, in the interest of keeping my face and the interior of my car dry, I decided to keep the windows rolled up and just used Rain-X on my windows. Then we didn't need to use the windshield wipers so much because the raindrops just leapt right off of the windshield.
We left Asheville and headed toward Tennessee. We got to drive through the Great Smoky Mountains. It's MUCH more pleasant to drive through the mountains during the day. They really were beautiful. They were foggy and smoky and misty just like I hoped they would be. Very pretty. Lucy, did any of your pictures from the mountains turn out? If so, be sure and post a few. If not, well, we'll always have google images to remind us of our trip.
Eventually we ended up on I-40 and started racing through the state of Tennessee. I have to say, it was a really, really beautiful drive. There were a lot of cool rock formations along the road and tons and tons of trees. Growing up in California for the most part, it is still very exciting for me to see so many trees all at once, especially when they have leaves on them.
We passed several billboards that tried to lure us to Pigeon Forge, TN to see the Titanic Museum. Tempting. Very tempting. But we resisted and drove on to Nashville. Driving through Nashville was insane. We had to go through like seven interchanges just to stay on I-40. The GPS kept saying things like "Stay left in the right lane, stay left in the left lane, stay right in the left lane, keep right, merge left." Sometimes I'd think "WHAT did that just say?!" But there is no time to doubt the word of the GPS. You just do what it says and hope that you don't end up driving off of an unfinished freeway ramp that is still under construction. Fortunately, the GPS led us aright. We made it through an excessive amount of interchanges, stayed an I-40 and continued our westward advance.
It poured rain on us most of the afternoon. Really poured. Thank goodness we had put Rain-X on the windows. Worse than the rain though, were the semi-trucks. The trucks threw more water on the windshield than the rain clouds did. For the most part it was fine but there was this one five-minute segment of time that I have had nightmares about since. A truck in the right lane pulled in front of us in order to pass two slower trucks that were in the right lane. We slowed down substantially to accommodate the truck in front of us. Then, another truck from the right lane pulled in right behind us. Reeeeeeally close. The reason I NEVER cut off a truck is because I know those things have a really hard time stopping and I don't want to end up crushed. So why a semi-truck would ride anyone's bumper is beyond me.
So there we were, with a huge truck in front of us and another huge truck on our rear bumper AND two trucks on the right side. No trucks on the left side of us thankfully - just a huge gully. But we were boxed in by trucks in the pouring rain. I kept waiting for one of them to jack-knife or just drive over the top of us or something. I told Lucy "I have nightmares like this! This is what happens to bad people when they die!!!" It seemed to drag on forever but at long last, the truck in front of us managed to pass the two trucks on the right and he merged back into the right lane. We took off as fast (and responsibly) as we could.
At about 4:30PM we reached the Pinson Mounds State Archaelogical Park in Tennessee. The Pinson Mounds were built between 1-500 A.D. (or C.E. if you prefer). It's the largest grouping of mounds in America from that time period and Saul's Mound, the mound at the center of the Pinson complex, is the second highest prehistoric mound in the United States. Anyway, I was pretty excited to go there and to see all these structures and walls and mounds and stuff. We were also rather relieved that the rain let up so we could walk around without getting soaked.
When we arrived at the park the museum had already closed but the park was open until sunset. Since it was still cloudy we weren't really sure how much longer we had until sunset, but figured we had oh maybe another hour or so. We parked, hopped out of the car and looked for a map of the different trails we could follow. While we stood there reading the map we started thinking "Hmmm, it's sort of eerie here with no one else around, isn't it? It feels a little isolated." I mean, there were cars in the parking lot, but we didn't see anybody else. And it was soooooooooo quiet. We decided maybe we didn't want to go hiking to the farthest corners of the park, maybe we should stay on the trails nearest the car. So we picked the trail to Saul's Mound, the mound at the center of the park. Since it is the tallest mound in the park we thought, "Well hey, maybe if we hike to the top of Saul's Mound we will be able to see the rest of the park from there. Then we won't have to go hiking around to see the other mounds."
We started on the trail to Saul's Mound. It really wasn't very far at all. You could see it from the parking lot. On the way there, though, we ran into a deer. Figuratively, of course. I mean we didn't REALLY run into it. We just saw it and stopped a moment while it stared us down. Then it walked off and we walked on. Lucy and I started getting more and more anxious about how dead quiet and isolated the park felt. We started talking about all the Law and Order and Criminal Minds episodes where people get murdered in parks. Seriously, in a park like that, what chance do you have? There's no cell phone reception. If you scream, no one will hear you and come to help because no one but you and the murderer are there. I know what you're thinking - if Lucy and I were both there then it would be two against one in a fight. But if you new Lucy and I, you would know that that probably isn't much of an advantage. I'm not sure that either of us would be much help in a fight. Unless, of course, it was a dance fight. Then we would be very formidable opponents. But neither of us are exactly known for our great physical strength.
We reached Saul's Mound and walked up like a million stairs to get to the top. I think I walked through a few spider webs which meant I would start waving my hands around in the air and trying to pull invisible sticky threads off of my face. I was happy that none of the spider webs seemed to have spiders attached. We eventually made it to the top of Saul's Mound. It was pretty cool. Apparently the corners of the mound are oriented to the four "cardinal directions." In laymen's terms, the corners point North, East, South and West. That's what I like to see: some real thought prior to construction. Sadly, our plan to see the whole park from the top of Saul's Mound was foiled by the trees. The trees were lovely of course but they blocked our view of everything else.
We walked back down the stairs and didn't have to worry about spider webs since I had already cleared them all on the way up. At the foot of the stairs we started toying with the idea of hiking around a bit more to see a few more mounds. But then we would hear a rustle in the trees and think "What was that? Did you hear that? Was that a squirrel? Or was that a serial killer?" So we decided maybe we wouldn't go hiking off into the far reaches of the park by ourselves at dusk. Instead we headed back toward the parking lot. Before we got back in the car though we decided to make the stop more worthwhile by playing on a nearby swingset for a little bit. THEN we got back in the car and headed toward Memphis.
Part of me was very disappointed when we left Pinson. I had had such high expectations and we really didn't get to see what I had wanted to see. I felt like maybe it was a wasted stop. I think I even told Lucy I was super disappointed in that stop and maybe we shouldn't have stopped at all. About twenty minutes later I said "No, you know what? I'm glad we stopped. Every trip needs a disappointing stop." But if there is one thing that we really learned from that stop, it's that Lucy and I really need to cut back on the Law and Order and Criminal Minds reruns. We're getting far too paranoid.
Lucy at the top of Saul's Mound. Look at the glee on that face.
The stairs up to Saul's Mound (now completely free of spider webs).
The foot of Saul's Mound. It doesn't look that tall in this picture, but it really is tall, I swear. Maybe if Lucy didn't take pictures CROOKED you could see how tall it was. :)
Me on the swings.
Lucy on the monkey bars.
