Tennessee

2019-08-19 Monday

We woke up this morning in Tennessee, drove all day (over 400 miles), and we are STILL in Tennessee! But if we just walked over the bridge which is over our heads at the moment, we’d be crossing the Mississippi River into Arkansas. That’s for tomorrow.

But today was all about getting to Memphis. It was in the 90s and felt like 100–I don’t know how we would have survived without air conditioning, frankly. We left our interstate rest stop at 9am, and didn’t make it to Memphis until about 7pm— and that was with the extra hour we gained someplace during the day. So we were driving for about 11 hours today. We made 3 stops for gas, because we want to always have a full tank (and besides, a few of the fills cost a mere $2.16/gallon, which is ridiculously low lately.) We also spent almost 3 hours at a Walmart in Lebanon, TN (a little east of Nashville) to have some lunch and do some shopping—we needed groceries, and that new Jeep battery. Joe handled the battery purchase, and then he left me to finish the food shopping while he went back to the RV to pick up the new one in. Like I said, the stop took a very long time, but we sure needed some food in here!

Lots of Orange at the Walmart (Go Vols!)

During the drive, we of course tried to decide what to do about a place to spend the night. I think maybe i need to get over my aversion to paying for “expensive” campsites, i.e. regular privately owned campgrounds, until the weather cools down. This is the 2nd night we opted for no electricity. I am amazed, however, we are doing as well as we are— our campsite is in the parking lot of the Bass Pro Shop, which is inside a vast pyramid which is a landmark in Memphis. We are, as I said, RIGHT next to the river, and we are under a maze of highways converging on the I-40 bridge which goes over the Mississippi. We found the opportunity for this location on an app called “free parking”, and everyone who recommended this location said it was exceptionally noisy because we are directly under the highways. They were right . But we won’t hear them that much, because we set up the RV with our generator running the air conditioning for the night. It is really quite cool in here! There are 2 other RVs near us, and security guards patrol the lot (they know we have permission from the Bass Pro store to be here, so they are just an added safety measure for us, not a problem.) The Pyramid is very cool— it even has an observatory at the top.


We unhooked the Jeep so we could park the RV in some regular painted parking spaces. After Joe set up the exhaust for the generator (it makes sure no CO2 gets in here), we cleaned up and decided to go get some of that famous Memphis Barbeque for dinner. We drove the Jeep to Beale Street, immediately getting into the tourist thing (hard not to, when we saw all the neon and crowds and music pouring out of all the restaurants!) Many places, however, stopped serving at 9, and it was already 9. So we went into BB King’s, and had dinner there. I have to say, i was not impressed with the atmosphere, but the food was delicious. I had a NOLA Po’Boy sandwich (beef with bbq sauce on a roll) and Joe had a pulled pork platter. We both brought half of our meals home—they were VERY generous!

After strolling down a couple of blocks of Beale Street (which is a closed-off pedestrian plaza), it was time to get back home. I had to finish yesterday’s blog (which I wrote in the car today) and quickly write this one! I’ll add some photos and then it is BEDTIME!