Through South and North Carolina and Tennessee and on to Arkansas

The next morning, I packed up and drove past the Lake Hartwell dam into South Carolina. Of course, another photograph of the state sign and my truck was exposed. I curved up through North Carolina and the Blue Ridge Mountains. As I drove into Tennessee I drove through the Appalachian Mountains. I never thought I would see anything as beautiful as the Rocky Mountains in Colorado but the scenery I saw in the southeast rivaled it. Every five miles or so, there were little country churches. There were creeks and streams flowing through the green fields. At one point, I drove about fifty miles alongside a winding river where kayakers and rafters were taking on the white water rapids.

My original plan was to hook up with Interstate 40 and take it all the way to southwestern Oklahoma to see my aunt Zuma. The only way to get to I-40 from Hartwell on some of the bigger highways was to drop south and then back north or to go north, to Nashville and then back south to Memphis. I decided to take Highway 64 straight west through Tennessee. As I drove further west through Tennessee the landscape looked like what I would imagine Ireland to look like. There were beautiful rolling hills as green as I have ever seen with cattle grazing on the lush grass. As I drove into McNairy County, there were signs designating the highway as the “Buford Pusser Memorial Highway”. It had been years ago but I remember seeing the movie, “Walking Tall” and “Walking Tall II”. Buford Pusser was a sheriff that had tried to clean up the lawlessness that existed on the border of Mississippi and Tennessee in McNairy County. In the process, his wife was killed and he was stabbed and shot several times. It was hard to believe that there was such corruption in that quaint, peaceful county.

I drove into Memphis just as the sun set. Jumping onto I-40, I decided that I would drive on past Little Rock, Arkansas before I stopped for the night. I didn’t want to stay right in Little Rock because the next morning was Monday and again, I didn’t want to catch the rush hour traffic. The Interstate through Arkansas was horrible. It about beat me to death. I’m sure that my truck needs the front end aligned after traveling through their state. There were horrible bumps in the road that could cause some cars to roll or even knock the front wheels off. By the time I found a motel room, I was exhausted. I stayed in Conway, Arkansas and I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.