CONUS Conquered...August 31, 2012...Day 2

(Kim's Perspective)

Today was 8/31, our 16^th wedding anniversary.  No need for applause, just send money.  We both woke up at 5:30 and were ready to hit the road but we took our time getting up, had our morning coffee and took the Boys for a short walk.  It was quiet in the campground and no one was up.  We went in search of someone so we could pay for our site – no self registration kiosk here.  The two nice ladies at the visitor center let me in, even though they weren’t open.  I told them I needed to pay for our campsite and the kind woman said “are you from Tennessee?” and I replied “No, Maaaaam, I’m from Maryland”.   I’ve been “down south” for less than 24 hours and BAM, I’ve got the southern drawl creeping out.  It’s amazing.  

The drive was pretty standard except of course when "Toonces" decided he wanted to drive.  

It was somewhat unsettling as he has very little driving experience and we were at full speed on a multi-lane road. Fortunately for the safety of us all, he quickly grew bored and decided that being in the passenger "Lane" was just fine by him.  ;P

We got on the road at 7 and headed towards Nashville.  Our destination was Tishomingo State Park in Tishomingo, Mississippi.  We decided to nix the full drive from the top of the Natchez Trace Parkway at mp 444 outside of Nashville and jumped on at mp 370.  We arrived at the park around 2 pm and got set up pretty quickly.

The site kind of sucked.  It was paved, but it was very narrow and just dropped off on all three sides.  We seriously considered finding someplace else, but we had already paid for it (reservations are generally a necessity when traveling on a holiday weekend) so we sucked it up and just made the most of it.

We unloaded the bikes and decided to ride down to Trace State Park just south of Tupelo.  

We soon realized that the Natchez Trace Parkway and the Blue Ridge Parkway cannot be compared.   I’m not sure what I anticipated, well, actually, I anticipated a BRP in Mississippi and Alabama and instead got a flat, only slightly curvy road with absolutely NOTHING to look at or stop to see.  Oh how I take the BRP for granted.   Who knew that our little East coast parkway could be so stinking awesome?  Now granted, the awesome factor generally increases exponentially with every 10 mph over the posted speed limit, but even caging it can be somewhat enjoyable.  Not so much here.  In fact, not so much at ALL.  Wow.  The tallest peak on the Parkway is 800 feet.  Seriously?  800 feet?

We chatted with Joshua, the park ranger at Trace SP for a bit and got info on the ORV trails in the park.  I'm going to like it here.  :)  

We were hungry and needing dinner – it was our anniversary after all – so we headed into Tupelo to find some grub.  Grub we found and it was surprisingly good.  I say this because, as we walked across the parking lot, I noticed a drive thru.  A drive thru?  Uhh….no.  For those of you who don’t know, I am vehemently opposed to eating fast food.  The closest I get to anything with a drive thru is Starbucks.   I was scared.  Very scared.  We walked in and walked up to the counter. I asked the clerk if it was a sit down restaurant or a fast food joint and she smiled and replied in her Southern drawl “it’s a combination fast food and family owned restaurant”.  Buh?  I don’t even know what that means.  I looked at the menu – much like that of any small family owned restaurant and glanced over at the well stocked salad bar and ordered a burger and a salad.  The burgers come plain – you take them to the salad bar and dress them yourselves (think Fuddrucker’s).  They do, however, come in foil wrap (think fast food).  

I must admit, this was one of the best salad bars I’ve ever had.  Everything was crisp and fresh and there was an impressive variety of items.  Nom, nom, nom.  So, our wedding anniversary dinner was at a “combinaaation faast food, and faamily owned restauraaaant”.  I swear if I’m here much longer they won’t know I’m from the North.

It was getting dark, so we quickly geared up as best we could with full bellies.

We rode back to the trailer side by side (well, me illegally riding left of center so as to shine more light on the road) and chatted about our day and our plans for the rest of the week.  It was a good day – we hit Alabama and Mississippi and thus have now been to every state in the lower 48.  Wooo hoooo! Bill lived in Hawaii for 3 years, so he’s one up on me.  He’ll probably hit the 50 mark before I will as I’d prefer to visit Alaska next.  We’ll have to save for that one.  Maybe that can be for our 20^th anniversary.  Meh, maybe 17^th.  Like I've said before, that’s what credit cards are for.  J

CONUS Conquered...August 30, 2012...Day 1.5

(Kim's Perspective)

We got up early and Bill started calling tire places to see who had what in stock and finally had success with Tires Plus in Frederick.  If you’re ever in need of tires, pay Sergio a visit.  Nice guy.  We put the old/new tires in the back of the truck (Bill will simply sell them on CL later or swap out for a new set of rims to put them on) and headed back to the house to repeat the bike loading and trailer hitching for a second time.  The second time seemed to be the charm (glad it wasn’t the third).  We got on the road at 11:00 and took 70 to 340 to 81.  We weren’t sure where we would end up staying – it largely depended on how far we got when we were tired and ready to stop.  We took a few breaks throughout the day to let the Boys out and have a quick lunch, then finally started giving serious thought to where we would be staying around 8pm.  We decided on Cumberland Mountain State Park in Crossville, TN off of I40.  We stayed here overnight on our trip to Arkansas last year so we knew the park would serve our purpose. It’s actually quite nice, but we’re never in a position to spend more than a night here as we journey through so we located a PERFECTLY level (don't let the picture fool you) campsite that allowed us to stay hitched up. 

This was awesome since we got in at 10 pm and planned for an early departure Friday morning.  Rather than it taking 15 minutes to set up, we were able to pop out the slide and connect to shore power in under 5 minutes.  Oh yeah! That’s the way to do it. It was a long day – 11 hours of pretty stressful driving for Bill (had a lot of trailer sway down 81) and 11 hours of exhausting passenger time for me.  I have a harder time staying awake when I’m riding shot gun than when I’m driving – but alas, these are the burdens one must bear.  It was a good day.  Any day that you make it in one piece to your destination always makes for a good day!

CONUS Conquered...August 29, 2012

In our quest to bag all 50 states, we decided to travel to Mississippi and Alabama for our 16^th wedding anniversary.  It’s been almost 2 years since I’ve blogged about a vacation, and nothing will compare to BKEA, but I figured bagging the last two states in the CONUS was worth some blogging time.

Plus, this trip was going to be a little different…

Our trip was supposed to start on Wednesday, August 29^th.  We both left work a little early and rushed home to finish packing the trailer and get the new toys loaded in the back of the truck.  We finally finished getting everything ready to go and, after the realization that we needed to make a quick trip to the pharmacy en route, we got on the road at 5pm.  We left with some farewells from the neighbors and headed to the pharmacy.  I jumped out and walked past the trailer…and stopped…and walked back…to tell Bill that I smelled propane.  He checked the tanks while I picked up his RX.  One of the tanks was leaking at the connection so he shut it off and flipped over to the other tank.  Problem solved.  We figured we’d just get a new tank and deal with it when we get home.  We got on 70 and took 340 to 81.  Or would have had we made it more than 14 miles before we smelled something burning and pulled over to investigate.   Bill jumped out while I stayed with the Boys (all three – we have Lane with us for this trip) and when he climbed back in the truck he informed me that one of the airbags exploded and was melting onto the exhaust.  Joyous.  He also said the tires weren’t riding well and were extremely hot to the touch. Humpf.  These were brand new tires that were put on just a few weeks ago.  We went with a different tire than we usually put on the truck.  Lesson learned.  Stick with what you know.  The extra weight in the bed and the tongue weight of the trailer puts us at max payload, but hey, it’s a truck, it’s supposed to be used hard.  What to do, what to do?  Returning home, we discussed our options. We could not take the newly purchased XTs with us and haul the trailer without issue, OR, we could upgrade to an LT tire to give us more weight capacity.  Naturally, this option would cost us another thousand bucks, but  hey, we just bought two brand new 2013 dual purpose bikes specifically for this trip.  What’s another thousand dollars?  That’s what credit cards are for.  ;)

So, that was the start of our vacation…or the false start as it turned out to be. We kept a positive attitude about it and pointed out that we would have another night of sleeping comfortably in a king size bed. We’re also both confident that all of these things happened for a reason and we’re quite fine not knowing what that reason was.