Start odo 31094. Easy access back to I-40, on which I continued past Nashville nearly to KY. There’s an interesting building on the Nashville skyline that looks like two statues of Meroni; turns out it is the BellSouth (now AT&T) building, sometimes called the Batman building.
Onto I-24, which was a nice road through sedimentary uplift. However, after one crosses into KY, I-24 becomes a shattered concrete road well past Fort Campbell, at which time it becomes merely a bad road.
I found that the larger tires I installed after my last trip make the speedometer read about 3 mpg low, as confirmed by two separate GPS systems. I guess that means “low and slow” is a little faster progress than I thought!
The vegetation I saw all day was typical east coast: sweet gum, oak, maple trees; lots of green brush; well-watered. It will be interesting to note when all that changes.
Lots of very large farms appear in western KY. Barley/ wheat/ corn, separated by trees and lines of green veg. Not yet into the waving wheat fields of the mid-West, but much more open than Maryland farms.
I figured out how to operate the HD radio in the Goose, but there was a paucity of entertainment (clearly, I’m picky).
The shift from Eastern to Central time caught me by surprise, and I arrived at the KOA in Calvert City KY at about 1:30pmCT. Lots of time to kill. I thought about extending my driving time on subsequent days, but just over 300 miles per day seems right now. Perhaps when I get to the “big empty” (thanks, Fred, for that image), I’ll prefer longer days.
The KOA is very nice. Clear roads, with a big topographical dip in the middle of the campground. Sites had been carefully leveled and all utilities worked well. There’s a power switch in the power pedestal for the cable TV amplifier, which I turned off as part of hooking up (I always turn off all breakers before plugging in). Of course, no cable TV until a helpful staff member pointed out my error!
