We drove down to Tennessee at the kind invitation of our summer condo neighbors Gary and Ann. The weather was warm and sunny and was perfect for traveling as we started out Monday Oct. 10 from the condo around 8:30 am. The drive down and back would normally be fairly quick and easy, to the point of being boring, if we had stayed the whole way on the freeways. Since Michigan and Ohio are mostly pretty flat, we did stick to I-75 until we got past Cincinnati and into Kentucky. Fortunately my Garmin Nuvi GPS (as I assume most other makes do too) allows a setting which allows me to avoid highways. Once the terrain started to look interesting, we exited the freeway and reset the GPS. Then the fun began.
The amazing little machine immediately asked me to "drive to highlighted route". We traveled on a smaller, two lane highway until we saw a sign indicating Big Bone Lick State Park. I haven't been there for 40 years, having at that time made the same diversion while driving to Florida with my good old friend David all those years ago. I think it was only the name that caught our eye then and after a brief drive around the park this time, it was clear that at least the part of the park we saw was fairly mundane, the main attraction being the sign at the entrance bearing the funny name of the park.
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| We all think of wood fences but many farms had these same stone walls. Miles of them. |
After we turned at each diversion, or if I failed to follow the instructions perfectly the GPS voice (Jill, American) would exclaim in a somewhat exasperated tone, "Re-calculating!" and often would be followed by "In point two miles Make A U-turn". If we were generally heading in a southern direction I would often ignore Jill's insistence on making a U-turn until she reluctantly gave in to "Recalculating". In spite of the apparent test of Jill's patience, she always eventually came up with a new route and we arrived in Lexington KY at around 5 pm. Which was a couple hours later than we would have had we stayed on the main highway but we certainly saw a whole lot more which made the trip much more interesting.
I had checked the internet before we left and discovered there was a Longhorn Steakhouse in Lexington so we found it and had a nice meal before finding a Red Roof Inn and a clean, affordable room for the night. The inn was on the south side of town, right on Hwy 27 so we could get an early start on our continuing, and meandering route to Crossville TN. We were never disappointed by the ever changing scenery along the way. Yesterday, north of Lexington, the scene out our window was mostly the rolling hills and the rich horse farms that Kentucky is famous for.
We started out from Lexington early.
Today, the terrain becomes more rugged as we enter the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains that are to the east of us past Knoxville TN.
We told Gary and Ann to expect us around 2 pm and we were right on schedule. Unfortunately in the last mile of our trip, Jill and the GPS incorrectly misled us down a road that led near but not exactly to our destination. As I back-tracked onto the main highway, and just as I was about to call on my cell phone, we couldn't believe our eyes. We were saw a rare Mustang Shelby pass as we U-turned back on to the main road against Jill's advice. I remembered Gary had told me he owned one and the Shelby slowed down in front of us. Sure enough it was Gary.
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