Day 2

It was a long day traveling between Louisville, KY and Memphis, TN.  Due to the slick roads caused by the night's sleet and snow, we held off leaving Louisville until after the morning rush-hour traffic and associated minor accidents had been cleared, so we got a really late start.

We encountered no bad roads, but instead really large stretches of beautiful iced landscape in both Kentucky and Tennessee all through the day's drive; large conifers hanging heavy with iced needles, small trees leaning over sideways from the weight of the ice, tall-grass areas and roadside shrubs with each stem, each leaf, each tiny hair covered with frosty white.  Rivers in these states are overflowing, flooding huge areas of forest and field, belying the supposed drought conditions that this country as a whole has been experiencing. I tried to take some photos of this beautiful frosted landscape "on the fly", but they just don't do justice to the reality, so I have nothing to post here that reflects the beauty we passed through earlier today.

There was a lovely sunset as we approached Memphis, TN, which is reflected in the photo at the left.  Today was a really long, tiring day of driving, with traffic slowed by some major road construction and a few accident scenes being cleared, as well as an unusually high number of traffic stops by police causing slow-downs as the traffic flowed around the unlucky drivers having been pulled aside.  We've decided to avoid other days of driving this long if if can possibly be avoided; we didn't pull into the campground until early evening when it was already dark, and we were all tired from driving/riding/supervising (see photo below to see who was supervising).

Tomorrow is another day, and we'll try to make it one in which we begin our exploration of interesting places, rather than just pushing forward to reach a final destination.  Weather forecast looks good for the next few days in the areas where we hope to be.