October 10 to 16, 2003

Seven days of driving across the country, 3,021 miles, nine states, five campgrounds, one motel...

We left Williamsburg, VA, stayed at Lake Norman State Park, near Statesville, NC, on Friday night and the next day headed to Nashville in the hopes of finding a sports bar to watch the Penn State - Purdue game. We passed the Ryman Auditorium, former home of the Grand Ole Opry, found a place to park and soon found "Bailey's" on Broadway and watched the game with the mother of a Purdue player. She happened to be in town on business. She had a better time than we did because her team won.

The Ryman

We spent the night at a motel outside of town and the next day it was back on I-40 toward Memphis. We drove right past Memphis without so much as a nod to Elvis, Graceland or BB King. Maybe next time.

Here is what we saw of Memphis. It reminded us of the Luxor in Las Vegas.

Next stop, Village Creek State Park on the east side of Arkansas.

We had a nice spot and bought some wood for a fire.

The next evening we found Eufala State Park, somewhere in Oklahoma. It was a great place with excellent campsites, a huge lake and hardly any people. Our site overlooked the lake and a nice sunset. Unfortunately, at about midnight, the wind picked up to about 100 m.p.h. and it started to rain. The van was rocking so much, we put the top down because we were afraid it would blow off. The next morning however, it was bright and sunny although still a little breezy.

Not wanting to leave Texas empty-handed, we took this photo of a road sign.

We drove through the upper panhandle of Texas, past Amarillo and the Cadillac Ranch and on into New Mexico and Ute Lake State Park.

Ute Lake State Park, NM

Wednesday night we found Homolovi Ruins State Park near Winslow, AZ. We had stayed there before. It was the first place we set up camp on our first cross-country trip three years ago.

Here I am with a cup of coffee in the morning sun on Thursday. That day, October 16th, we drove all the way back to our home in San Diego and thus ended another excellent journey.