We arrived at the Baileyton KOA at around 2:30 PM, after losing another hour to the time change. The weather was cooler than it had been, so I left the kitties in the trailer while driving. The only tense part was driving through Knoxville. I didn’t see a convenient bypass so I just drove through the city and contended with the traffic, which was heavy on I-40. But about an hour from the campground, we split off onto I-81 to start wending our way north to New York.
The Crossville/I-40 KOA was one of my favorite campgrounds of the trip, and not just because the weather was thunderstorm-y and significantly cooler (84 F) than it had been up to this point. The campground was lush and spacious, with lots of green grass and trees and ponds, and pleasant walking trails.
The drive to Crossville, Tennessee had been… interesting. My truck’s navigation was mostly very good, but it had its quirks — it had directed me to take a right out of the previous campground’s entrance, instead of left, which would have taken me back the way I came in and right onto the freeway. But it required backtracking maybe 300 feet, and in order to save me that tiny bit of going west instead of east, it took me six miles down a narrow, twisty country road that turned to gravel and had me seriously wondering how I was going to get out of there with my trailer if the road got any worse. But I finally came to the end of the road, where a sharp right turn took me back onto I-40. Whew!
Then, I had studied the map the night before and, in order to avoid driving through Nashville, I had decided to take one of the bypasses that went around the city. There were three: I-240, 440, and 840, and I wanted to take the widest one, 840. But my nav wouldn’t give me that as an option, only straight through on I-40 or the shortest bypass, I-240. I thought I had changed it to I-840, but when I got to the exit for 840 E and the nav didn’t tell me to take it, I thought, Well, Nav, after that little adventure up a gravel road, I think I’ll make my own choice, and exited. Then, instead of calculating a new route based on my choice of bypass, the nav kept telling me to take the next exit and go back! Frantic to get me back on its own choice of road. So I switched it off until after I’d gotten back on I-40.
I-840 was definitely the right choice, lovely scenic drive through fields and trees. Then I noticed in the side mirror that I hadn’t properly closed the little hatch over the electric cord storage on the trailer, and it was flapping loose. Also, it was getting pretty hot and I wanted to check on the cats, but there was no place to stop until near the end of 840. Pushed the electric cord back into its storage and closed the hatch tightly, and decided to bring the cats into the truck to get them out of the heat. I opened the flap on Mister’s carrier so he could get out if he wanted to. He spent most of the drive content in his carrier.
Arrived in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee around 2 PM after driving straight through from the Memphis KOA. I’d planned to leave the cats in the trailer for an hour or so until I made it through Memphis, then stop and see how they were doing and take them into the truck if it seemed too hot, but there weren’t any places to stop until I was about 15 minutes from my destination, at which point it wasn’t really needed but I did it anyway for the sake of 15 minutes’ worth of peace of mind. The cats were fine and the trailer didn’t feel that hot — I’d leave the windows cracked while driving and the shades down and it didn’t overheat like the inside of a car or truck would, so the cats were fine.
The fun part of driving through Memphis was seeing the Memphis Pyramid along the side of the freeway. I had no idea what it was at first — just this big shiny mirror-tiled pyramid in the middle of the city! I had to look it up online to find out about it. Would love to visit it some day.
