Homeward Bound

Sunday, October 24; Nasheville, Tennessee to Simpsonville, South Carolina

Well, this is it. Our last day on the road. No planned stops today, other than for food and nature breaks. We leave Nasheville and blast down I-40 towards Knoxville. Always a pleasure driving through Knoxville. Ruth and I traveled many thousands of miles by motorcycle over a six year period in this city and the beautiful, surrounding countryside attending the Honda Hoot motorcycle gathering each June. Many wonderful memories from those excursions.
Up and over the Smokies, down into Asheville and onto home turf. It was good to be home (sort of), but we both felt our trip was only half over. We could have easily spent 2 more weeks on the road. Well, I could. Roo and The Beagles........???
But the seed has been planted - we've both been bitten by the bug, and traveling this great land in this way is no longer just a dream.........

Final Thoughts: Wednesday, October 27

The words and pictures in this blog do not even come close to doing justice to what we did and what we saw. So many things not included here that gave deeper meaning to this trip in our hearts and in our souls. It opened our eyes to so many things and thus changed our perceptions of those things. Do this. Take a car trip of this magnitude or greater - expand your comfort zone. We can say that now, as we have taken the plunge. We found that we did have the time, because we made the time,  and then realized that our little world did not fall apart after all. Time, or the perceived lack of, is no longer a viable excuse for us.
Do this trip as a way to see what lies between point A and point B, not as a way to get from point A to point B. See what lies outside the suburbs of our exustence, both in terms of nature and people. The emotional catharsis I experienced in Arches National Park was possible because I left myself open and let nature in. The beauty of that place, of which I had not seen anywhere, rushed in and overwhelmed me. And so it was for the entire trip - being open, being flexible, and just being. I feel a different person for it, in all aspects of my life, the large and the small.
We are thankful for having had the opportunity to have done this trip. If you have the opportunity, we encourage you to do it as well - you will not regret it. Thank you for reading.

Peace,
Bob & Ruth
Duncan & Gretchen too

Damn Right I Got the Blues; Casey Jones; Tennessee Tacky

Saturday, October 23; Little Rock, Arkansas to Nashville, Tennessee

We awoke to a beautiful morning, finally. Today is a run day - and we have another state park picked out to do so. But that's a couple of hours away. Leaving Little Rock, we head on down the road towards Tennessee. We cross the Mighty Mississippi River in Memphis, home of the Delta Blues, and icons of the blues and rock & roll. Being a blues lover myself, Memphis is a must return to city next year for a Memphis Blues motorcycle tour. Elvis, BB King, Johnny Hurt, Buddy Guy and all the other great blues artists had their start or played frequently here in Memphis. Looking forward to that.

The Mississippi River crossing here is a far cry from our St. Louis crossing two weeks ago. St. Louis gave us the Gateway Arch, a beautiful park, and Preservation Heritage Jazz on the river. Memphis gave us traffic, highway, and a big, dirty city (at least the part we went through), barely being able to see the Mississippi as we crossed it. Damn right I got the blues!! But having our sat radio belting out great blues tunes made it alright.

On through Memphis to our Tacky Tourist stop of the day - the Casey Jones Railroad Village and Museum. Ooooweee. Tacky Tourist it was! Didn't even let The Beagles out of the van. Snapped a few photos of railroad memorabilia and off we went.


Casey's locomotive
The mechanical engineering of this beast is fascinating



Now it was time for a training run. An hour later we exited for the Natchez Trace State Park. A beautiful place for running, hiking, horseback riding, and swimming. Hunting too apparently, as we heard gunfire off in the distance. I made sure I ran in the opposite direction. I took a half hour run while The Beagles took Ruth for a walk. This was my first run since running in Moab at 5000 feet. I felt fantastic! What a difference a bit of oxygen makes. These trails were very hilly, but I was flying up and down them like I was on a running track. Quite the contrast from doing the hilly half marathon in Moab. After we cleaned up and had a small picnic, we rolled out of the state park and headed towards Nasheville, our destination for our final night on the road.

Following the written directions, we find our campground right in the midst of tourist heaven - Opryland! Good lord, does Tennessee have a lock on all the tacky tourist destinations? Even our campground was all glitz and flashing lights! It was all a huge adjustment for us, having been on the road for two weeks, avoiding urban areas and being surrounded by beautiful, vast openness; to come back east to claustrophobic congestion, population density, and......flashing lights! It was really hard to resist turning around. Really, really hard. Well, we had to make the best of our last night on the road. So out came the bottle of wine.

Tommorrow is our last day on the road. The Beagles sense it, and are longing to be back on their couch.

Leaving the Great American West behind

Friday, October 22; Elk City, OK to Little Rock, Arkansas

Wow!  Another huge storm on the Great Plains last night. Raining lightly this morning, but the skies east look awful serious. We cook breakfast on the porch of our cabin, stow our gear, and herd The Beagles into the big, white Prairie Schooner. On the road again.

The old alignment of Route 66 parallels I-40 here, and we drove on it for about 15 miles. Then the skies opened up again, and it was very hard to see the road. So we bid ado to Route 66 and hopped on I-40 at the next interchange. It rained hard all the way to, and through, Oklahoma City. As we floated through Oklahoma City, the skies began to clear and turned partly sunny. Looking to our left, we saw the old alignment of Route 66 turn northward toward Chicago and disappear in the distance. Goodbye, friend. We look forward to seeing you again.



Our campsite-Little Rock KOA



The Beagles
"Can we go home now?"



Western Oklahoma is all prairie. Beautiful, desolate, immense. Eastern Oklahoma, however, provides the traveler with a totally different topography. As we roll towards Arkansas, the land becomes rolling to hilly, trees and grass appear. Colors turn from brown to green. Dark soil replaces sand and pale dirt. Up ahead, a sign "Welcome To Arkansas" greets us. For us, a rather sad moment. Even though we are still west of the Mississippi River, we are no longer in the Great American West. No cowboys, no longhorn steers, no ghost towns, no desert or cactus here. As college football fans, we realize we are in the home of the Arkansas Razorbacks, a Southeastern Conference football team. Doesn't get any plainer than that.

Onward we motor to Little Rock, our stop for the night. Only then do we fully realize how close to home we are, and our epic journey is in it's final stages.