TUESDAY - STILL HEADING EAST

We spent last night at a large Flying J Truck stop, and I do mean LARGE. There must have been 200 + parking places for trucks. We managed to stop early enough that we got a prime spot in the last row at the back of the lot, on the end with a grassy area on the drivers side. Shortly after we pulled in, a truck parked right next to us and it continued to fill up until there were only a few spots left when we woke up this morning. I'm getting pretty use to being lulled to sleep by the sound of trucks idling all night. We have been amazed by the number of truckers on the road. I took a quick picture of the line up of trucks parked in the row we were in and that does not even show how many were actually there. I really admire these truckers. This is one hard life being on the

road day after day. We stopped at the pump on the way out and filled the truck with diesel. It was $2.969/gal which was cheaper that we had been seeing. We headed out on a cloudy, humid, "blustery" day as described by the local weather guy. There were thunder storms south of Nashville and lightening strikes as high as 99 as the storm moved east and we were hoping that it would not venture our way. We were on the road at around 7:20am. We were 14 miles west of Nashville - heading to the 440 bypass to avoid the city - when we ran into bumper to bumper traffic in all three lanes. This was a slow start to the day that we had not anticipated. We finally made it to the 440 bypass around 8:25am only to find the same bumper to bumper situation. Eventually, we managed to get back on the I-40 east of Nashville. We would have liked to have got through Nashville, but all the reports on the TV and radio were talking about the destruction caused by the recent storms that had gone through the area. There had been massive flooding and the city was still in the process of recovering. There were roads and bridges out and the clean up was extensive. We crossed into the Eastern Time Zone about 10:45am. The rest of the drive today was pretty uneventful. We continued to have a cloudy day, but no rain. We continue to be amazed by the amount of truck traffic going east and west on I-40. After lunch we changed our plans and headed east on I-81 toward Bristol and the Virginia border. Robert would like to see some of the points of interest from the Civil War on our way up to Washington, DC. We near the Great Smokey Mountains and are traveling through some mountainous areas and lots of beautiful farm land. Everything is so green. The trees are flowering and there are flowers in bloom along the side of the roads. We were both tired this afternoon and called it quits around 4:30pm. I pulled into another Flying J Truck Stop and we managed to park in the RV section today. We hope to do a little sight seeing tomorrow on our way north to Washington, DC.