Days 4 and 5: On to TN!

The last two days of our epic, cross-country move actually went by pretty quickly--after getting past the third and longest day of the trip, everything else seemed like a piece of cake!

The original plan for Day 4 was to drive to Pearl, MS, just outside of Jackson and spend the night there. We would finally drive out of Texas, where we had been since the end of day 2, through Louisiana, across the Big Muddy, and about halfway through the state of Missississississippi (I think I got too many "iss"s there--check on that, get back to ya later!). We left the Dallas area fairly early and got through the majority of the day so quickly that we decided to go an extra hour or so to Meridian, MS. We stopped for lunch at Cracker Barrel on the way and our waitress was kind enough to take our picture.

Just after passing Jackson, MS, and the hotel we would have been staying at, we ran into a huge traffic jam. Not knowing what was going on--and being completely unable to find a local radio station--we stayed on the freeway, reasoning that they couldn't shut down the freeway completely for too long as it would really screw up traffic. We were wrong about that! The freeway had already been completely closed since 7:00 a.m.--about 10 hours at that time--because of a fuel truck overturning, killing the driver and spilling hazmat everywhere. We were detoured off the freeway (eventually) and through a little side town. Overall, the delay was almost 2 hours, but then it was free sailing to Meridian, and when we got there, we were quite tired.

That set us up for a fairly short day on Wednesday, January 21: Meridian to Dayton, TN. We woke to the coldest morning so far with ice all over both cars. We drove an hour or more until we ate breakfast, then didn't stop for very long the rest of the day. We were out of MS within about 20 minutes and Alabama didn't take long to traverse, either. We got to see the Mercedes plant just outside Birmingham and experienced possibly the worst interstate highway in existence: I-59 north of Birmingham. I can't speak for the south-bound lanes, but you definitely don't want to drive very far in the right-hand lane going north-bound. Feels like that road has needed re-paving for about 20 years!

After crossing the northwest corner of Georgie, we arrived at our new home: Tennessee. Another hour down the road--through Chattanooga and up the Tennessee River Valley--and we were in Dayton. My dad was waiting for us on the front porch of the new house and we immediately set to unloading the truck in about 40 degree weather. We worked for about an hour and a half before deciding to break for dinner at my parents' house. We had a nice spaghetti dinner there and slept like rocks that night. It was a long, sometimes exciting, sometimes boring, sometimes arduous trip, but we were home.

I think there's one more installment in this travelogue--we did some siteseeing in the area that first weekend, we bought a barn, and we've made considerable progress in making this house we bought feel like a home. I am hopefully to have that post done tomorrow.