Pacific To Atlantic - Day 8 - Tennessee Drive

2008 Dec 30th Tuesday ..late night 1am
Roadtrip Diary Day 8: Tennessee Drive

Stayed in Best-western previous night.. West Memphis in Arkansas.. West Memhis is just across TN state border. The hotel owner was desi.. Interestingly, in the room, there was a copy of bhagvad-gita along with usual bible.

Left AK and entered Memphis TN again around 9am.

Memphis mud island was closed.. so spent some time near riverwalk in downtown.. Bed of Mississippi river is too vast.. It indeed gives feeling of ocean (small scale :)).. An afro-amec man was sitting on the bench enjoying the smooth river flow.. must be pondering over something :)... Quick india phone-call from riverside gave comforting feeling..

Drove thru Memphis downtown for a while.. Was on main street and accidentally entered into the tram station.. initially, the road and rail-track were together and after few moments, felt weird, because i was the only one driving there.. Pedestrian told us that i am going towards tram-station and not supposed to drive here..So a quick anxious reverse-drive was a fun.. surprisingly, GPS didn't warn us either.. Luckily any Cop wasn't around, otherwise.. OR if a train would have entered to tram-station, behind us, then it would have been been adventurous experience :D..

Started driving from Memphis towards Nashville.. 200 miles drive.. Memphis Or TN being "blues music" hot-spot, this part of I-40 is called "Music highway".. quick stop at visitor center on the way to pick up some maps.. Drive was nice.. Initially, it was similar to river-side drive like MS or eastern AK state, but as we started going inland, somehow the concentration of tees started growing.. and becoming dense.. Also lot of state parks on the way like Natchez SP..

On the way, hit 105 mph speed-mark once.. and yes only once.. in whole roadtrip :)

In Nashville, went to Centennial park to visit Athena Parthenon temple.. Exact replica of original Parthenon from Athens, Greece.. obviously, whole site had Greek feeling.. Also a similar replica of "goddess of Athena".. indeed a huge statue.. statue itself is made of plaster.. but decorated with gold polish... sort of cheap.. didn't find it interesting at all.. Lot of fragments from the original Parthenon are also showcased.. They are made of real marble..


Photos of katrina disaster were also displayed.. don't understand the relation..

Centennial park is part of Vanderbilt university.. Dough Schmidt one.. Wanted to visit the university, but we were indeed short of time..

Had a nice sandwich at "which wich" place.. american-german place.. You can make your own sandwich, the final outcome was excellent and nice experience..

Drove thru old state capitol building.. visitors not allowed during week-days..

Left Nashville around 3:15pm and started driving towards Knoxville.. around 200 miles drive again.. nothing much in Knoxville..except riverfront of Tennessee river.. the drive was nice again.. all through mountains.. Reach Knoxville around 7pm

GPS multi-route feature sort of messed up our visiting points. we were planning to go for boat ride on riverfront on a stoned wheel boat, but missed completely. GPS kept us driving towards Smokies NP and we realized the mistake after few miles.. Also we didn't expect timzone change from CST to EST.. and lost an hour again in fraction of a second :).. so it took us 9pm to reach Gutenberg :)

Drive from Knoxville to Gatlinberg was lil bit surprising.. we went thru small towns of Servile and Pigeon-forge.. Because of Smokies NP nearby, both towns are so commercialized that you can find each & every american food chain and shopping place here.. I indeed hated it.. Still, christmas lights on the way were nice. also at every traffic-light, at the center, they have a Smokies mile marker..

Gatlinberg is just outside Smokies..gateway to NP.. I was expecting it to be a small German town, but it turned out to be really commercialized one.. unbelievable.. whole Gatlinberg is like "Tempe downtown at mill avenue" or "SD gaslamp quarters in downtown"..

At local micro-brewery "smoky mountains brewery and restaurant" had nice dinner with Karaoke music. Walked around few blocks in downtown..

Before returning to our motel, we decided to drive thru national park at late night just to get a feel of it.. US-441 thru NP is open 24hrs.. NP entrance is within couple of miles from Gatlinberg downtown.. but surprisingly it was pitch-dark near the entrance itself and obviously we were alone there at 11:30pm.. We drove a mile inside the NP and all of us were scared to death. Darkness and nothing else.. all tall trees around.. no visible light except our car headlights.. It felt like a huge mistake.. Still i kept on driving for few minutes till we hit the NP entrance window.. "Gumnaam song" filled up the env :).. Luckily, from other side, couple of people drove by.. they must be adventurous driving thru NP.. we decided to head back and took a U-turn. Powered off our headlights for couple of seconds to "feel" the darkness :) ..Hssh.. If i would have got some open patch to see the night sky, that would have been the best..but whole view was obstructed by tall-dense forest.

Overall, that 5 mins drive inside NP was scary but awesome :).. It gave me true feeing of a NP.. Being in Gatlinberg, i was lil-bit disappointed with whole commercialization aspect.. and sort of bad feeling for Smokies also.. but this 5 mins drive showed me no hint of civilization inside the NP :) and i was elated for tomorrow..

Staying in "Knights Inn".. "first" hotel at the entrance of the village.. okay place.. but way too cheap as compared to all other motels here in Gatlinberg. Manager told us that motel/land is sold to Hilton now and its there last day.. good deal for us !!

Any way.. tomorrow its gonna be real fun and long day.. Early morning from Smokies to new-year night-out in Atlanta..

Today's Drive: ~450 miles.. I drove all the way :)
States: AK, TN

Total Miles: 3100 miles in eight days
Total States (11) : CA, NV, UT, AZ, CO, NM, TX, OK, AK, MS, TN