We arrived back in Iowa today after nearly 4 weeks of travel. The strong winds that wore us out driving through Missouri subsided and we were able to stay away from the major highways as we made our way through the Iowa countryside. American Gothic After studying in France, Grant Wood came home to paint…

Read more

Not much to blog about for this day since it was primarily a driving day through Missouri as we make our way home. Driving proved tiring for both of us as we battled a strong wind from the west for the 4-hour trip. We stopped for lunch and a stroll at Indian Camp Creek Park…

Read more

I had one more spot in Memphis on my list that we had time to see this morning before leaving Tennessee. National Civil Rights Museum On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot while standing on a balcony outside of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. This motel has been…

Read more

The Riverwalk on Mud Island Memphis has a park on Mud Island in the Mississippi River that has a scale model of the Lower Mississippi that is a half-mile long. The horizontal scale is 30 inches to the mile and the vertical is one inch to eight feet. This is a most impressive sculpture with…

Read more

What made us think that Saturday morning would be a nice, quiet time to visit Centennial Park in Nashville? This park, near downtown, had adult intramural soccer games, bikers, joggers, tailgaters (for the nearby Tennessee/LSU football game), and tourists all milling around. We found a spot to safely park where we could easily get back…

Read more

Another reason for opting to stay at the Nashville KOA was that they offered a flexible and affordable shuttle to the downtown area. Our research told us it would be a very bad idea to drive Usain to such a congested area, let alone find a place to park. After ensuring the cats were taken…

Read more

We drove through Knoxville on our way to the Cumberland Mountains, but didn’t stop. Looks like some cool things to see there, but we were ready for a hiking day in a park again. Tony snapped the following pictures from Usain’s copilot seat. Cumberland Mountain State Park Cumberland Mountain State Park is on the Cumberland…

Read more

We headed out of the Smokies today (only to find ourselves briefly back in it later in the day). Fortunately, we left the national park early enough that we didn’t endure the mile+ line of slow moving cars heading to Gatlinburg that we had witnessed the day before. Gatlinburg – Gateway to the Smokies The…

Read more

Today we cross the park and spend the night in Elkmont campground on the Tennessee side. Thomas Ridge Trail We stopped at a pullout on Thomas Ridge to do a morning hike in the woods. We had the trail to ourselves which was lovely! The plant diversity that the Smokies are known for was on…

Read more

New-ish Parking Pass System Apparently, National Parks do have some leeway to do their own thing; the Smokies have instituted a parking pass system in which one is free to drive through the park, but required to have a pass to take up a parking spot for more than 15 minutes. Everyone seems to be…

Read more