Meriwether Lewis Campground Nachez Trail Parkway Hohenwald, Tennessee

Mileage:  53,421

There was heavy morning dew clinging to the roadside weeds, glistening in the sunlight.  It was already warm as we began today’s drive.  Highway 64 is named the Trail of Tears.  In the early 1800’s Indian tribes were forced to relocate to the west of the Mississippi River.  They traveled this path.  You cannot pass through here without thinking about the way Native American peoples were treated.

The Nachez Trace Parkway started as an Indian trade route.  It is a lovely ride through dense forest and rolling hills.

Our breakfast spot…so peaceful!

The Meriwether Lewis Campground is free.  All the sites are large and wooded.

We took our bikes out for an 8 mile ride this afternoon.  We road through the campground and into the day use area.  We toured the house where Meriwether Lewis (of the Lewis and Clark Expedition) died and visited his memorial.

Then we biked out on a country road.

We met Bill Lawson.  He was selling what I thought were great big apples but were in fact dried gourds painted to look like apples.  He had lots of other things made of gourds as well.  We talked to him for quite some time.   This weekend is the harvest fest in Hohenwald.  There are yard sales all along the way.  Bill and his son are set up hoping to make some early sales.  I asked to take his picture and he put on his hat…a true southern gentleman!  He told us to be safe riding over the “hills and hollers!”

Some mushrooms and a nutshell!

We listened to Jack Johnson music, had a campfire, and grilled some Alaskan wild salmon.

Green Acres RV Resort Savannah, Tennessee

Mileage:  53,121

Neither of us slept very well last night.  There were lots of tractor trailers in the Walmart parking lot and it was pretty noisy.  We got ready to roll and we promised each other that we would do our best not to be too grouchy!

We did get very cheap diesel fuel in Arkansas…less than $3.00 a gallon.

We rode across the Mississippi River into Tennessee.

We decided to take Route 64 to get off the interstate for a while.  We drove through the town of Adamsville.  This was the home of Buford Pusser.  He was the sheriff from the true story and movie “Walking Tall.”  The road is named after him and there is a museum that you can tour.  He is a local hero who worked to rid his small hometown of corruption and all manner of vices.

This also gets us closer to the Nachez Trace Parkway where we plan to explore tomorrow.  Shortly before the campground we crossed the Tennessee River.

We spent the afternoon getting laundry done and watching football.  It was 90 degrees and we were in full sunshine.  We didn’t even feel like cooking dinner.  We went out for pizza and then drove the Jeep down to the river.

Walmart – Lonoke, Arkansas

Mileage:  53,121

Very early this morning we heard the great fluttering of wings.  Two owls must have landed in the tree outside our bedroom window.  We heard them hooting as they settled down.  A couple of times in the predawn hours we heard them calling to one another as if to reassure one another that they were both still there.   When I got up this morning I looked for them in the big old trees but could not find them.

Today’s ride continued along Route 40.  Across Oklahoma and into Arkansas.  There were soybean crops, cattle, and cotton fields.

There were also a lot of casinos.  In Oklahoma there were 9 casinos just off of the highway.  Oklahoma has the most Indian casinos and gaming centers than anywhere else in the country.  We passed through Cherokee, Seminole, and Creek territories.

Lunch spot.

Arkansas.

We drove about 400 miles today.  We stopped at a Walmart.  Lucky for us the Mariachi Grill was very close by.  We hopped on our bikes and went out to dinner.  Margaritas and Mexican fajitas…the highlight of our day!!

The ride was unremarkable and so it was a good day to get other things done.  Lists are started for all the things that have to be taken care of at home before we can leave again.

We have this list for you today:

Reasons Not to Go to Alaska in an RV

1. If you have to ask what gas costs or you are concerned about your MPG – don’t go.
2. If you are VERY afraid of bears (everyone should be a little afraid) – don’t go.
3. If you get annoyed if you have one mosquito bite – don’t go.
4. If you are anxious about chipping the paint on your RV or tow vehicle or chipping a windshield – don’t go.
5. If you are going to freak out when the engine light comes on, when the power goes out in the coach, when the furnace won’t come on, when the grill won’t light or when your serpentine belt is shredded – don’t go.
6. If you don’t like driving/sitting – don’t go.
7. If you aren’t up for a challenge – don’t go.
8. If you cannot stand being in small spaces with your partner for long periods of time – don’t go.
9. If you are worried about getting wet, dirty, greasy, or muddy – don’t go.
10. If you can’t figure kilometers to miles, liters to gallons, and Canadian dollars to USD – don’t go.
11. If you can’t sleep when it is light outside, or noisy outside, or quiet outside – don’t go.
12. If you are in a hurry – don’t go.
13. If you can’t live without cell/WiFi/TV – don’t go.
14. If you are scared of rough and bumpy roads with sharp drop-offs, no shoulders, no guardrails, and steep 18% grades with frost heaves – don’t go.
15. If you tend to be a candy-ass or a chickenshit – don’t go.

 

You see, all of these things are part of the RV experience.  You have to take this stuff in stride or you will be miserable.  Carry duct tape, bungee cords, zip ties and bug spray…and enjoy the ride!!

 

Reasons you might want to go to Alaska in an RV

1. If you want to experience the adventure of a lifetime and the ultimate road trip – GO!
2. If you want to have your adventure before dementia – GO!
3. If you want to challenge yourself and step outside your comfort zone – GO!
4. If you want to STOP dreaming about it and do it – GO!
5. If you want to meet amazing new people from all over the country and from different parts of the world – GO!
6. If you love wilderness and wildlife – GO!
7. If you plan to reinvent yourself after retirement – GO!
8. If you want to see the most beautiful state in the U.S. – GO!
9. If you want to see the salmon run – GO!
10. If you want to drink crystal clear glacier water – GO!
11. If you want to see the tallest mountain in North America – GO!
12. If you want to see the Land of the Midnight Sun – GO!
13. If you want to walk up to the base of a glacier and touch it – GO!
14. If you want to contemplate the vastness, the enormity, the magnificence of America the Beautiful – GO!
15. If you want to open your mind to new ideas and perspectives – GO!
16. If you want to appreciate the resilience of people who survive and thrive in a harsh environment – GO!
17. If you want to share amazing views, and thoughts, and experiences with your partner – GO!
18. If you have the courage, energy, and enthusiasm and the idea of this trip thrills you – Make it happen – GO!

Red Rock Canyon State Park Hinton, Oklahoma

Mileage:  52,710

I was awake at 4:45 this morning watching Orion in the night sky.  The constellation was gorgeous and surrounded by all kinds of stars we never see at home.  I wanted to go outside and look but the wind was howling.  My first thought was of those cyclists who were leaving today to do 65 miles…how would they ever make it in that kind of wind.  My second thought was about traveling in the RV in all that wind.  The long sides tend to act like a sail.  Thankfully the wind had died down a lot by first light.

We got to start the day with FaceTime.  We talked to David and watched Oliver run all over the playground.  What a great beginning for our Friday!

We saw these goats in a field while we were fueling the RV.

The wind farm that began near our campground continued east for another 28 miles.  Wind turbines are not a novelty here.  We saw them all day today, in Texas and then in Oklahoma as well.

Cadillac Ranch is an art installation.  A wealthy man hired a group of “hippie” artists called The Ant Farm back in 1974 to create a work of art to put in one of his fields.  They came up with the idea to bury 10 Cadillacs nose down and fins sticking up.  People began to come and see this “sculpture.”  Tourists began by taking pieces of the cars as souvenirs and then they began to bring cans of spray paint.  To this day people still go and paint was is left of the cars.  This is a picture from Route 40.

Today our ride was through flat farming country.  Fields of hay and cotton flanked the highway.  Cattle ranches with real cowboys are common here.

Welcome to Oklahoma!  BBQ Brisket for lunch at Billy Sims BBQ…fall apart tender and delicious!

It was 87 degrees and windy for most of the day.

We stayed at Red Rock Canyon State Park.  It wasn’t too far from the highway.  It is pretty and peaceful here and a nice place to ride our bikes.  There are rappelling areas in the park where people climb the canyon walls.  Kyle we were thinking of you today!!

 

Midpoint RV Park Adrian, Texas

Mileage:  52,447

We passed several mesas on our way out of Holbrook and across New Mexico.

Albuquerque sits at the base of the Sandia Mountains.

After the big city there was a lot of wide-open space.  Lots of crops and cows and grassland.

Our breakfast spot.

Texas.

We stopped to have lunch and to make a decision about where we wanted to stay tonight.  Tim wanted a sleepy little town.  He found a small campground in Adrian, Texas – population 182.  This is the midpoint of Highway 66.

We rode our bikes on Old 66.

The wind farm.

Sunset.

We met Richard, a cyclist traveling with a group.  They began in Chicago and are biking Route 66 across the country to Santa Monica.  They are halfway.  They have another 1,039 miles to reach the west coast and 3 ½ weeks to accomplish their goal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Walmart Grants, New Mexico

Mileage:  52,133

I noticed on the map that the Petrified National Forest was just off of 40.  I knew we were meant to be going home so I didn’t get my hopes up too high…but we decided to go!

This was a spectacular day.  Even though this park is a short distance from the highway, it is entirely obscured from view.  You would never realize that it is there.  This is truly a hidden gem.  When you turn the corner and see the Painted Desert for the first time, it is like opening a present.  The dramatic clouds, the shifting sun and shadows, the burnished coppery rock formations, and the vast expansiveness are awe-inspiring.  Layers upon layers of rock…layers of time.

We traveled from the Painted Desert to Puerco Pueblo.  Here there are remnants of masonry walls built between 1250-1300 AD.

There is a summer solstice calendar.  The native people would have used this to determine the longest day of the year.  This was helpful for planting crops.  There are about a dozen of these calendars in the park.  Although it just looks like a rock, it is actually fairly sophisticated and accurate.

There are petroglyphs as well.

Blue Mesa was our breakfast spot.

Teepee.

When you imagine a forest, I bet you imagine green trees.  The Petrified Forest is unlike any other forest.  In order for the wood to petrify, it must be buried, therefore; all of the “wood” is rock; metamorphosed, fallen, and exposed.

We were meant to turn around halfway but we ended up driving the whole 26-mile distance through the park.

This took us to a rear entrance and out the “backdoor.”  From there we took the roads less traveled and drove through the countryside.  We saw distant pronghorns grazing in the tall grasses.  We saw ranches.

We saw sagebrush, stumpy, squatty pinyon trees, and mustard yellow desert flowers.

We drove through Navajo Nation where there were signs not to photograph cultural or religious activities…RESPECT!

 

The imposing mesas in the distance were in New Mexico.

We are staying in a Walmart in Grants, New Mexico.  Supplies gathered and then a bike ride at sunset.

Look for the beauty wherever you go!

OK RV Park Holbrook, Arizona

Mileage:  51,963

So, last night we we chatting with our campground neighbor.  She was from Idaho.  We were talking about trips we had taken and then we started talking about the weather.  She said she and her husband had decided to hunker down and shelter in place because of the big storm coming.  They didn’t want to travel because the hurricane was forecasted to bring lots of rain and flash flooding.  Hurricane???  Sometimes we live in our own little world and since we are not watching TV very much and we never watch the news at all…who knew there was a Pacific hurricane, Rosa, headed in our direction?  We went to dinner and then returned and started trying to gather information to make a decision.  We were going to take Highway 66 on a scenic route from Kingman to Sleigman.  There was already flooding in southern Arizona.  It was supposed to rain all night.  We decided to wait until this morning to make a plan.  I woke up early and it wasn’t raining at all.  We decided to take Route 40 instead of 66, thinking that it is a newer more modern road and it might be less likely to have flooding.  We also decided to leave as soon as we could and try to beat the rain.

We stopped to fuel the RV and there were two snowplows sitting in the parking lot…whatever for???  Mudslides maybe???

The morning was progressively cloudy as we traveled through the Arizona desert.  The scenery looked like great mounds of sand and rock with bits of cactus scattered on top…like sprinkles on ice cream.  We could see Rosa making her way toward us.

Finally, it began to rain, lightly at first and then steadier.   Much of the day looked like this.

We stopped at Meteor Crater.  50,000 years ago a meteor 150 feet across and weighing more than several hundred thousand pounds crashed into the earth.  It left a crater with a 3 mile circumference and a depth of more than 700 feet.

The Apollo astronauts trained in this crater.

It stopped raining!

Our next stop was Winslow, Arizona.  You might recognize this street corner from an old Eagles song “Take it Easy.”

We stopped for the day in Holbrook, Arizona.  We either had to stop here or travel another couple of hundred miles over the New Mexico border.  After driving and riding in the rain most of the day…we were tired!  The campground had pieces of petrified wood…so cool!!!  This rock is from the Triassic period, 230 million years ago.  Wood becomes petrified when the organic material in the tree is replaced with minerals, mostly silicates or quartz.  The process of petrification occurs when the wood is buried under sediment or volcanic ash and is deprived of oxygen.  This transformation occurs over millions of years.

Sunset.

We have passed Joshua National Park, Sequoia National Forest, Hoover Dam, Las Vegas, and today…the Grand Canyon.  There are so many places of incredible beauty to come back and see.

We had Maryland crabcakes for our dinner tonight…yum!

 

Zuni Village RV Park Kingman, Arizona

Mileage:  51,656

Our drive today was 150 miles through the Mojave Desert.  This is a brown, barren, desolate piece of earth.  The soil was sandy and studded with sharp rocks, prickly cacti, low scraggly bushes, and garbage.  But even here there is great beauty.  The Providence Mountains were looming on the horizon.

We stopped for breakfast.

It is October 1st and it is 90 degrees…I cannot begin to imagine how hot it might be in July.

We went over the Sacramento Mountains.

Over the Colorado River.

Into Arizona.

We are staying in Kingman.  We got on our bikes and rode for 7 or 8 miles on a bike path, through a park and around the neighborhood.

This evening we took the infamous Route 66 to dinner.

We ate great food at Rickety Cricket Brewing.

On our way back to the RV we stopped to peer into the windows at Dream Machines.

Barstow/Calico KOA Yermo, California

Mileage:  51, 409

Today we reached the 13,000 mile mark…lots of driving and riding…but we still aren’t tired of seeing new places.

As we left Bakersfield we saw lots of empty lots with small oil rigs.

We also saw Medjool date trees.  The land is sun baked and starting to look like desert as we passed over the Telachapi Mountains.

We saw the Telachapi Wind Farm.  Thousands of windmills/turbines that produce enough megawatts to power 350,000 homes in California year round.  This wind farm is one of the greatest energy producers in the world.  Many turbines were still today but on average the wind blows here 14-20mph which is perfect for clean and renewable power production. There are many people who are opposed to wind farms because the are “unsightly.”  Is coal mining prettier???

Highway 58 is bisected by the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail.

Today’s weather was 94 degrees and sunny.  It was hot but so much less oppressive than when it is in the 90’s at home.

We had only 2 options today.  We could camp in Barstow or continue for another 150 miles to Needles where the next campgrounds are located.  We chose to stop early.  We have had two consecutive long driving days.  We arrived at the campground by 11am.

Our view today.

A roadrunner in the campground.

Who lives in here?

I was able to do all the laundry and Tim was able to watch the NASCAR race.

We took a drive this afternoon. There is a ghost town called Calico which is the site of the silver  mines from the late 1800’s.  We contemplated a visit but decided not today.

We made grilled chicken and guacamole and sat outside watching the Ravens beat the Steelers.

The desert sunset was  amazing.

The stars were out tonight.  The desert sky was pretty!

 

Walmart Rosedale Highway Bakersfield, California

Mileage:

We were at the Sacramento Airport  at 6am.  Kyle and Allison were flying back to Baltimore today…so it it just us again.  It is already quieter.

The plan today is to travel south on 5.  We will see how far we get.   The road follows the mountains of the Diablo Range.

We want to take 40 east across the country.  We passed right by the exit for Yosemite National Park.  We just cannot see everything on this trip.  We will have to come back someday to see more of California.

Today was  a gorgeous driving day.  It was sunny with a gentle breeze.

We passed through the San Joaquin Valley, known for agriculture.

We saw grapes growing.  There were cattle farms and egg ranches.  The farmers were threshing some sort of grain.  We saw trucks brimming with tomatoes, it must be the end of the harvesting season.  We saw lots of tomatoes that had bounced from the trucks and they lay on the roadside.

We saw olive trees. We saw rice fields.  California produces 85% of the rice in the United States and even sells it to Asian countries.  Who knew???

We saw tree nuts including pistachios, almonds, and walnuts.  There are these little nut picking machines that they drive through the orchards after shaking the trees.  The nuts were heaped in great piles and then dumped  into tractor trailers with a loader.  The nuts are then taken to a hulling and processing plant.

We exited 5 for awhile and went down 33S.  We were hoping to find a produce stand for some fresh fruits and vegetables.  Once we were off the highway it was very evident that we were in a working area.  It was a nice diversion.  We saw lots that we otherwise would not have seen.

It is so very arid here, the earth so very parched.  Everything is brown except for the crops.  It looks like a desert.  The grass makes good tinder.  There were many places where maybe a cigarette and a truck fire had ignited the grass beside the highway.

The air alternately smells like dust, smoke, pesticides, or fertilizer.  We saw several dust devils swirling and twirling in the dry air.  Garbage being carried along in the current.

The fight over water is a major debate here.  There were lots of signs posted beside the road:

“No Water=No Jobs”

“Is Growing Food a Waste of Water?”

“Congress Created a Dust Bowl.”

“Food Grows Where Water Flows.”

Today was about getting some miles accomplished.  We are spending the night in a Walmart parking lot.  We needed supplies and we knew we wouldn’t enjoy a campground much this evening.