Road trip: day one Friday, October 16, 2009

Charlottesville, Virginia to a TBD location in Tennessee

Up at 7 am. Packed the van and headed out at 8:30 am. Temperature 44 degrees, cloudy but no rain. Light traffic in the C'ville area; school is in session.

We were treated to lots of colorful fall trees, green fields, and rolling hills. The most colorful trees, with bright reds and orange leaves, looked to be on fire to me! We passed a few corn and tobacco fields and saw cows, horses, and alpacas. The usual fog was hanging around at Staunton. The grassy highway medians filled with blooming pink wild flowers.

Saw the signs that indicated we were on the Civil War Trail but didn't have time to stop at any of the sites.

We crossed into Tennessee at 2 pm. At the state border, we were greeted by a giant guitar along the side of the highway. Its officially called the "Grand Guitar" and was once a music shop and museum.


Still on Highway 81, we started our drive across the Cumberland Plateau. It is listed as one of the "biogems of the U.S." since it contains one of the largest remaining dense forests in the East.

Transitioning onto Hwy 40 around 3 pm, we thought about the other end of the road - > Could take this all the way to Barstow in the desert just North and East of Los Angeles where it ends at Interstate 15.

Interstate 40 is called the “Music Highway” in Tennesse from Nashville, the unofficial birthplace of Country Music, to Memphis, birthplace of the Blues.

Hwy 40 turned into a parking lot at the western edge of Nashville due to an accident. We turned south on the 440 then caught the 70S to get around the jam. This alternate route took us through some fantastic old neighborhoods in the West End area of Nashville.

As the sun light grew dim, the 40 seemed to narrow as we found ourselves surrounded by 18 wheeler trucks making for a kind of “trucks” rule the road scenario. As we moved away from the city, the traffic thinned out and we decided to call it a day at Dickson, TN. We had hoped to make it as far as Jackson, TN but that was another 100 miles West and it was already 7:30 pm.

Ate dinner at a local Tennessee cafeteria-style restaurant, Farmer's Family Restaurant, complete with live music. We snacked on fresh, delicious corn bread, sweet with corn kernels, each in the shape of a small pancake. (Somehow we missed the gator and frogs legs!)

Route today: 29 to 64 to 81 to 40 for a total of 630 miles.