– Denton, Texas to Memphis, Tennessee –
As of today, we have visited 47 of the 59 US National Parks. We are visiting the last 3 parks in the continental US this summer: Smoky Mountains, Isle Royale, and Voyageurs. That will leave us with 9 parks in Hawaii, Alaska, the US Virgin Islands, and American Samoa. We’re doing Hawaii next summer, and we might even get the Virgin Islands between now and then. Mark says that we might do American Samoa at the same time as Hawaii, since you have to fly to Hawaii to get there anyway, but we haven’t figured that part out yet. The point is, we’re nearly there. It has been quite a journey, I must say.
Our first trip is a relatively short one to the Smoky Mountains, which we started bright and early this morning. Actually, it was a little earlier than we’d intended: Ripley woke us up at about 2:30am crying from fear of a rather loud thunderstorm. She has never been afraid of storms before, but ever since we left her with my parents when we went to Iceland last month, she’s been having issues when we have thunder. My parents’ dog, Django, is afraid of the noise, and I think she picked it up from him. I keep hoping we are going to fix the problem, but so far she doesn’t seem too interested in our attempts to soothe her.
Last night, the storm was a short one, but it was lively. Mark ended up having to get out of bed and let her out of her crate and sit on the floor with her for a few minutes to soothe her. She chewed on her bone for a while, and kept running over to me for attention, and then after a while, the storm passed and she calmed back down enough that we were able to put her back in her crate. With the thunder gone, she settled right down and went almost immediately back to sleep. Mark and I found it a little tougher, which was unfortunate, since we still had to get up at 5.
When 5am rolled around, we crawled out of bed (with a degree of reluctance, I’ll admit) and seized the day, or something. Really, we worked out, showered, packed a few last minute things, cleaned the pool, and washed the dishes. Mark even did a bit of work on his computer. By the time 10am rolled around, we were finally ready, and we all piled in the car for a driving day. Originally, Mark had planned to work until noon today, but the meeting he was supposed to attend was canceled, and he decided we could leave earlier for our trip instead. It turned out to be a good decision, because it took us a bit longer to get to Memphis today than we’d anticipated thanks to all of the rain.
Mark and I wanted our lunch not long after we left the house, since the sleep deprived are often starving, or so I’ve found. We grabbed some Chipotle in McKinney, before it was even noon. Still, the Chipotle was very busy. I guess everybody wanted a early lunch today. Ripley had kibbles, as she always does. She’s always so excited about her kibble; I guess she never gets tired of eating the same thing every day. She eats it so quickly I sometimes wonder if she tastes the stuff.
We stopped a few times for breaks and gas, but overall, the day was pretty unpleasant. We didn’t get out of the car much because it just wouldn’t stop raining. Mark was really sleepy, and he snacked on baby carrots to stay awake. He said the crunch kept him focused. Don’t get me wrong, he drank a lot of coffee too, but the carrots were my favorite part. We did stop at a nice rest stop in Arkansas, and Ripley got to run around in the wet grass for a few minutes, but we moved on and it was soon pouring again. I don’t think it really stopped until we were almost to Tennessee.
Dinner was at the Whole Foods in Little Rock. We really like their food bars. I had soup and bread, since it kept me warm in the rain, and Mark had a plateful of odds and ends from the hot bar, as he usually does when we eat there. We picked up a few cookies from their bakery and some snacks for the rest of the trip on our way out.
When we made it to our La Quinta in Memphis, we were pleasantly surprised by just how large our room is. It has a massive raised bed and a bathroom big enough to be its own hotel room, if we’d brought our own cot. It was even free, since we payed for it with La Quinta points. That’s a win in my book.
Tomorrow we will see the Smoky Mountains and the highest point in Tennessee. It will be a pretty long day, and we are very tired tonight. We are hoping it doesn’t storm, so Ripley will let us get a decent night’s rest.
– Trip Total : 495 miles –
