The Mother of All Road Trips

Off to Tennessee!

We love a good road trip! For us, it always bookends a great adventure and gives us hours of windshield time. When you are with your person, there are times where you feel like you've talked about every possible topic. Tanya and I have never had that. We've known each other since high school and always find new things to navigate. For me, that is one of the best things about our adventures. We began our annual MEA trip around 3:00 am with our destination Tennessee. We pointed the Nissan Altima to the south. Tanya took the initial leg of the 16-plus hour trip which included a couple of stops along the way. We are both music nerds so we stopped at the Buddy Holly, Big Bopper and Richie Valens crash site in Iowa. We turned too early and had to navigate some farm implement but we eventually found it.

The Day the Music Died

Another great thing about "us" is how much we laugh. There are so many stories from the road and our trek to see the Gateway Arch is among the top. I wrote about that in a separate post, but lets just say "when you gotta go, you gotta go". After the adventure at the Arch, we continued on. As we navigated through Illinois, we made our way through a town called Cairo. I've got a whole separate post on that as well, but to give a little background, Cairo is located in the southern most part of Illinois along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. It was once a bustling community but struggled with racial unrest in the late 1960's and early 1970's that left Cairo gutted. Buildings sit vacant, forgotten in time.

Cairo, Illinois

It's one of the benefits of driving to ones destination. You never know what you are going to find or the story that every town has. It was getting dark as we drove through Cairo but we vowed to stop on our way back home to check it out in more depth.

We still had a two hour trek ahead of us so we continued on. In our travels, we tend to book Airbnb's when we are staying multiple nights and hotels when it is a one or two night trip. I can't say enough about how great our Airbnb was in Westport. It was a three bedroom, two bath house that had way too many square feet for the two of us. We used it as a central location between Memphis and Nashville. Our plan was to get to a couple of National Parks to get some hiking in and to get to one of our favorite vices. Buc-ees (IYKYK)

Our third Buc-ees visited!

If you know, you know. Buc-ees is our jam. It's the Disney of gas stations. Find my separate post on this amazing must go destination. Let's just say the best sandwich I've ever had came from Buc-ees!

Sugarlands Distillery

We also visited Sugarlands Distillery, a craft distillery in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. They had the most amazing sippin' creams that we sampled. They were a rum-based cream with popular flavors, Banana Pudding, Eggo waffles, birthday cake among others.

Varieties of Sippin' Cream at Sugarlands Distillery

We visited Mammoth National Park as well as Smoky Mountain National Park. The views in both parks were spectacular and worth every moment. (photos below)