Traveling South

Thursday August 5
About 300 miles

Leisurely awakening this morning (nothing new). We decided we had plenty of time to head south today. Chuck and Alice prepared a final morning menu for us, including over-easy eggs, sausage links and patties, 'hard' gravy, and fresh biscuits prepared with loving care by John. The hard gravy was especially solid this morning, and we wondered what it would be like deep-fried.

There was barely room in the SUV for our stuff, but we compacted it into place, then bid our goodbyes in the driveway. None of us were ready to leave Evansville, and yet we had places to go and people to see. Bye (wave)!

Down US41, then a stop in Henderson. Sort of a nostalgic stop for us, because Linda and I always used to stop there for gas on our way back to Ole Miss.

East on 60, through the town proper of Henderson and then other small towns in Kentucky, eventually reaching Morganfield. We turned south and followed some pretty back roads all the way to the Land Between the Lakes. Past Barkley Dam, then a nice drive south into the park/wilderness, discussing some of the finer points of navigation as we went.

About 20 miles down we turned into the Elk & Bison Prairie area, proceeded through a gate, then through another electric gate that resembled something from the Jurassic Park movie, with big signs that instructed us to stay inside our car. For a mile or so, we craned our necks but saw nothing, then finally spotted one elk far away in some branches.

Bison at Land Between the Lakes

Cresting a hill we spotted another elk with huge antlers. Just further along was a herd of buffalo congregated around the road and a small pond. Ta-tonka! A big male was standing on the road surface, sort of guarding all the cows and calves. Always amazing to me to think that these animals once dominated North American prairie lands.

We soon left LBL and enjoyed a pretty winding route further south and into Tennessee, generally following TN13. Somewhere around where we crossed I-24, the lightening and thunder started up in earnest, and then the skies opened up on us. The NWS would have called it a severe thunderstorm, but we thought it was pretty neat and it cooled the temperatures down plenty.

The severity of the rain not quite captured in this picture

We stopped at Mickey-P's a couple of times, to P of course, but for other miscellaneous items. Mom liked to confound them with an order for iced cappuccino, non-fat milk, light sugar, slow brewed, from the western coast of Ecuador, shaken not stirred. Otherwise we kept moving, and called Mary to give an arrival time. We hit the Alabama line around 6pm, and soon rolled in to Florence down Chisolm Road, a pretty direction from which to enter town.

Mickey P's

Now get my cappuccino right...

Past my old high school (nostalgic pangs...), then to Mary's house. Wonderful to see Mary again after a few years, and she is looked just marvellous. We all gathered in the living room to catch up, reacquaint, and share a late happy hour. We then enjoyed an excellent barbecue dinner, complete with slaw and potato salad. We especially liked the beans with white corn and kidney beans.

Mary was ready for us with a delicious barbecue dinner

But first a couple glasses of bourbon

After dinner John and Dad went outside in the rain and captured yet more interesting sounds of crickets, rain, thunder, and a legion of tree frogs with his Zoom, to be cataloged for video soundtrack use. In the living room, we all chatted more, finished off some chardonnay wine, and played with Baby Girl.

John made an initial attempt at repairing Mary's broken internet connection, reconnecting and resetting hardware, eventually ending up online and on the phone with AT&T to gain access to her DSL service. Neither AT&T remedy panned out so we postponed the effort until tomorrow morning. Just before bed we caught a few scenes from Kill Bill Vol. 1 on TNT (highly censored) then Pulp Fiction on AMC (ditto).