Day 1 - To Tennessee

Rainbow

Today we got up at 5:15AM today, just because of our internal clocks and the light on the HVAC unit being bright blue and lighting up the whole room.  This means we did not do hotel breakfast but grabbed breakfast from McDonalds and ate on the road.  Unfortunately, the medication I’m on for my stye upsets my stomach and breakfast did not stay down.  I can now add puking on the side of the road to my life experience list, not something I needed to add.  After that I felt fine and we continued on without issue.   

Welcome sign at visitor center

The traffic today was actually fairly good and lighter than yesterday. It also helped that we were on the road at about 6:00 AM, which allowed us to avoid a fair amount of the traffic.  However, the semi truck drivers seem a lot worse at driving in the past, with following too close and cutting over really close to people.  During the drive we made a stop at the Tennessee welcome center so I could pick up a map.  We stopped for lunch at a Mexican restaurant, in Monterey, TN.  The food was perfectly reasonable Mexican food, but we didn’t think this through, knowing we are going through Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, which probably have better Mexican than middle Tennessee. The drive through Nashville wasn’t bad, since we don’t go directly through the city.   We stopped at Parker’s Crossroads Battlefield Visitors Center about 40 miles from Jackson.  I wanted to stop at the Shiloh National Military Park but the sign for it was deceiving and was going to be an hour one-way out of our way, so we didn’t stop.   

We got to our hotel in Jackson, around 2:30 PM, which is a lot earlier than our previous road trips, but that happens when you start at 6:00AM.  Tomorrow, we head out through Memphis to Oklahoma City.