Hello Nashville, whatcha knowin'?

We got a late start on our road trip this year. Katie is now in middle school, so she only gets one week off in the fall, unlike the two younger girls, who have three weeks off. So, our original plan was to have Katie pack everything up the night before, load up the van during the day on Friday, then pick her up at school at 3:30 with all of our vacation accoutrement in tow.

For some reason, Lorie decided at the very last minute that she didn't want to do it that way - she wanted Kate to come home first then we would all leave from here. Since the van was already loaded, she decided to take the Camry to pick up Katie. Of course, the two younger sisters decided that they had to go with Mom, so Dad was left home to pace back and forth and to wish that we were already hitting the highway. In fact, Dad and the luggage were the only ones not following his original plan. I still can't figure out how that happened.

So of course, once everyone arrived back home, there was much piddling and last minute loading of loose items, so we got an even later start than was planned. Can you imagine that? Us, getting a late start? Hmmm.

We took I-70 all the way to the river, which worked out fairly well. The express lanes were pointing the wrong way that afternoon (due to construction or something? They had been that way for our trip to the ball park for Kate's band performance a month earlier), so we were able to use those lanes to arrive downtown in record time. We bunched up a bit in the depressed section (when I use that phrase, I always picture Eeyore the donkey, standing on the shoulder, head hanging low, eating thistle and grousing about life), but other than that, traffic was fairly smooth.

We crossed our first state line and settled in for four hours of driving. As we were approaching Mount Vernon, I had to perk up and lay on the brakes. A fire engine crossed the median from the west-bound lanes of I-64, right in front of us, and started heading east. About a mile further, he drove off onto the right shoulder. I couldn't figure out what the heck he was up to, but about that time traffic in both east-bound lanes came to a halt. After about 10 minutes of nobody moving, people started to hop out of their vehicles, walk over to the median and try to see what was going on. Some folks bailed, crossing the median themselves to head back west toward alternative routes. As we sat there, two more emergency vehicles passed us on the shoulder heading east towards the unknown catastrophe. Things were starting to look bleak.

After 30 minutes or so, just about the time that we had started to plot our own escape on the AAA road map, things broke up and we started moving, slowly. We drove for a good mile or two before we saw what had happened. There on the right shoulder was the burnt out shell of a Scion SUV - one of those really ugly, plain boxes of a car. The tires were gone, and it was sitting low on the rims. The paint was all burned away, and the window glass was absent. One fireman was standing in the right lane, directing traffic (He was repeatedly waving his arm from left to right, indicating that we should all continue to drive in the only direction that was possible. Your tax dollars at work.) Two others were spraying the smoking wreckage with water. There was an ambulance at the scene, but no sign of any of the vehicle's occupants, or any indication of what might have caused the conflagration. It looked as if the driver had simply pulled over to the shoulder, and in conference with his passengers had decided to simultaneously and spontaneously combust in order to avoid enduring one more moment of association with such an unattractive vehicle.

This all took about an hour off of our time (but we were grateful to have a non-flaming, operational vehicle within which to travel). We drove through a McDonald's in Paducah, Kentucky for dinner in order to avoid stopping. We drove into Tennessee (which is still very pretty), through Nashville, and finally found the Fairfield Inn in Murfreesboro around 10:30. It was fairly nice, similar to the Springhill Suites room. Katie fell asleep immediately (she gets an early start, having to be at school by 8:00am). The other two kids and their mom wound down with some books, and we were all asleep by midnight, anticipating an early start in the morning and an early arrival in Florida the next day. (Hey, we can dream, can't we?)