TENNESSEE TRAVELS

Friday was an R&R day for us at the RV park in Bluff City, TN.  Other than doing a load of laundry and cooking spaghetti for supper, I just sat around, watched TV and played on the computer. 

We took our time leaving the RV park in Crossville yesterday, and pulled out just after noon and planned to take our time since we would be staying the night in Wal Mart parking lot.  With the summer heat, we try to arrive as late as possible since we can’t run the A/C on those occasions.  So we made quite a few stops along the way and still covered over 300 miles. 

As we made our way back through Bristol to the Interstate, I spotted their courthouse.  I have a thing for old courthouses and think they are just full of history and character.  I wouldn’t give you a plug nickel for one of the newer, more modern courthouses and think it’s a tragedy when I see one and know that it had to have replaced a much more picturesque old one.  Anyway, here it is:

Now, isn’t that gorgeous?  Love it!

Back on the interstate and making tracks, I once again, ooo-ed and ahh-ed at the scenery, but it was hard to get a good picture because of the haze in the air.  But I clicked away anyway.

I spotted this barn in the distance and had to get a shot:

We skirted just north of the Smokey Mountains and climbed a few mountains ourselves:

I noticed an abundance of cedar trees mixed in with the hardwood:

Hey, Tommy, is that one of your trucks?

We stopped at Crossland, Tennessee to visit the Black & Decker outlet store in search of an air compressor and I knew we were getting closer to home when I saw this familiar grocery store sign across the street.  In fact, we parked in their lot and walked over to black and decker:

We didn’t find what we were looking for, so we were able to get back on the road without spending any money.  That’s always a good thing, don’t you think?  I do! 

What did we see from there?  I’ll let the pictures do the talking:

 

About this time, I started noticing the clouds in the distance.  Besides old courthouses and handsome hubby, another of my favorite things to look at are clouds.  Especially thunderheads!  And the closer we got to Nashville, the bigger they got.

And just about the time we started around the bypass at Nashville, this was in our windshield:

And then then the rain came…..boy oh boy, did it rain, complete with lots of lightning and thunder!

I took this next one as a sign that the storm was about over.

I looked up and discovered that the temperature had dropped 15 degrees, which was nice…….very nice.

There were more clouds on the horizon, but the rain for us was over.  On down the road we went and the temperature slowly rose once again.  But the scenery was breathtaking.

I got busy with the computer and wasn’t watching when DeWayne said “Grab the camera.  You’re gonna want to get this”, so I did.

It was a beautiful sunset.  And more thunderheads as the sun was setting:

 

See, I’m easily entertained.  Just give me a sky full of thunder clouds and it’s a cheap thrill for me.  But it was getting dark, the battery was getting low on the camera, and we arrived at Dickson, TN at our designated “home” for the night – Wal Mart.  We took our showers, opened the windows and crashed for the night.  Ahhhh, that bed felt soooooo good!

We roused fairly early this morning since our bodies are still stuck on eastern time, got breakfast and coffee out of the way (compliments of McDonalds), I secured the RV while DeWayne took his morning walk, and away we went, heading west toward Memphis.  We only had 165 miles to cover today, so once again, we took our time.  We stopped at Lowe’s on the way back to the Interstate and found the air compressor that DeWayne was looking for, then stopped here and there for coffee, bathroom, or lunch. 

We arrived here in Millington, Tennessee at the Naval facility around 2:00 this afternoon and were ready to get set up and park our tired butts for a couple of days.  Okay, we were prepared this time.  We had our I.D.s and truck registration out and ready for security at the gate.  We’re on top of it, by George………..wrong!  The lady said she wanted to see I.D.s…..check…….insurance verification….oops, that’s a new one, but no problem, it’s right in the glove box……truck registration……check!  We’re so proud of ourselves until she says the old familiar, “This is NOT your registration and your insurance verification has expired”.  Okay, we did have a current verification, so we traded the new one for the old one, which I promptly tore into shreds to avoid that boo-boo again.  But then there was the registration issue.  Once again, we explained that what we gave her WAS our registration and it’s all that Oklahoma provides when registering a vehicle.  Okay, she says, but this one expired in April…..

Damn!

Let me add at this point that this “lady” was none too friendly and….well I’ll just say downright rude!  DeWayne was none too happy with her and her attitude, and I wasn’t either.  She went to call whoever she needed to call and DeWayne got out of the truck to go in the RV to see if he could find the current registration, which we both knew we had, and she made him get back in the truck.  So we waited and filled our time comparing what we thought of the “nice lady” and her “endearing and understanding demeanor”……..so to speak. 

After a few minutes, a really nice base police officer arrived and DeWayne explained that the papers we had were actually registration papers issued in Oklahoma (why is that so hard to believe?), but that we had put the wrong copy in the truck and that he would have to be allowed to exit the truck to get the correct copy.  Okay, no problem.  So in he went to retrieve the lock box once again, brought it out and dug for the current copy……..it wasn’t there……

Double damn!

The nice officer (bless his heart) looked at the truck tag and the RV tag, which were both current, so he issued us a pass and even removed barriers for us to make it easier to get the RV through.  See, they had barriers on both sides of the road that were staggered, which forces everybody to drive in a tight zig-zag pattern to the next gate.  After pulling up to get out the way of traffic to get the registration fiasco taken care of, it was looking pretty impossible to maneuver the first set of barriers without backing up.  Long story short, we were up and going and actually smiling again in no time.  Thank you, nice officer.  Lady at the gate?  Well, you know what you can do with your attitude! 

We followed the directions and turned right at the commissary and sure enough, there was the RV park and I fell in love.  It’s laid with a central road and circled cul-de-sacs lined up on both sides.  The sites are wide and easy to access, with lots of grass and trees to enjoy.  I took this picture as we approached:

DeWayne backed the RV into the slot we picked out in no time and it didn’t take long at all to get set up and settled in.  Most all the slots I could see had huge Sycamore trees and shade and we picked the first one we came to that was empty that has great shade trees and, it turns, is about 30 feet from the laundry.  While DeWayne took his walk, I opened the curtains in the bedroom and the view was so pretty that I had to get the camera and get some pictures of the view from that window.  Here are the views looking left, center and to the right:

We will be here until Tuesday or possibly Wednesday.  We had planned to leave here Tuesday and spend another night in Wal Mart parking lot somewhere in Arkansas, then finish the trip home on Wednesday, but we may wait until Wednesday and drive the entire distance, which I’m voting for.  I wouldn’t mind spending an extra day here at all! 

That’s about all I can think of to say, but I realize that I have been forgetting to post the puppy pictures.  I’ve about run through all the ones that are on this computer, but DeWayne has my old PC now that has hundreds of them, so I’ll download some tomorrow onto my jump drive and transfer onto this computer.  I think I have one left on this one that I haven’t posted yet, so here it is:

Well, that’s all folks.  Tune in next time for another episode of “The Breeze”, but until then……HAPPY TRAILS!!!