Day Four: On to Tennessee

Day Four: On to Tennessee

Monday greeted us with perfectly blue skies, a welcomed sight after the gray skies of Saturday and Sunday.  The ride itself was probably the best of the vacation to date - the landscape, the roads, the weather (not a drop of rain!!). 

It was another early start, as we were on the road by 7:30am.There were stretches along the way where we had the road completely to ourselves. The sun got brighter, the skies bluer and the day stretched out before us as we continued through Kentucky on to Tennessee.

A lot of the ride has been through mountain roads, past hillsides dotted with grazing cows.  I continue to be amazed at the barns we pass; clustered as outbuildings on a farm or standing sentry in an unused field. They stand on farmlands and curiously, next to new homes, perhaps a quiet reminder of days gone by. As we moved further west in the state, the hills still rolled, and they were still beautiful, but they didn't have the majesty of what we'd seen in Winchester or Lexington.

We have also been through dozens of small "Main street" towns.  More often than not, the street we ride on is called Main Street. They are perfectly nostalgic and wonderfully patriotic, with American flags flying proudly on homes and storefronts. Historic Lebanon, KY, as the town was promoted when you arrived, was one of those. Another was Greensburg, which boasted its Courthouse as the oldest public building (c. 1802) still standing in Kentucky.

The first landscape we saw when crossing into Tennessee didn't look much different than what we'd seen in Kentucky. Lunch was at the Snow White Drive Inn on the outskirts of Lebanon, Tennessee (not to be confused with Lebanon, Kentucky). It was a diner right out of a 1950's movie, complete with red lacquered chairs, formica tables, and vintage signs for Coca-cola.  Of course, being in Tennessee, there was the requisite Elvis Presley poster hung in a place of honor.

This was Americana at its finest! The menu offered a stunning array of hot dogs, hamburgers and "Pig Packs", pork barbecue and the fixins' to feed 4, 6 or 10 of your closest friends and family. I played it safe with a grilled chicken sandwich and s side of french fried with brown gravy. Jason lived on the wild side and ordered "The Big Dog" (seems perfect for him....), a foot long hot dog slathered with mustard, onions, chili, cheese and topped with cole slaw. This thing was enormous! While I would never have imagined cole slaw on a hot dog...or a hot dog you needed to eat with a knife and fork, he said it was really good and ate the entire thing.  I'll admit my chicken sandwich was quite tasty and the fries and gravy were divine.

We asked the waitress for directions to Route 255, but she didn't know, so she kindly asked the Sheriff, who had just wandered in for lunch. He came over to our table and asked, "Where ya'll  headed?" Jason explained.

"Hmmm..." he pondered. "Is that your bike out there?" he asked, nodding his head in the direction of the Harley. We told him it was and he scratched his head and told us to "di-rectly follow Route 70 right out here into Nashville, the State Capital."

Yep. he put it just like that in a southern drawl that just dripped.

And so we headed to Nashville.

As we rode, we remembered there was a Harley dealer in Tennessee, and we thought it was Nashville. So as we approached the intersection for Route 255, Jason decided we would go in search of new tee shirts for the collection. Mind you...we THOUGHT it was in Nashville..... needless to say, we spent an hour in traffic, no Harley dealer, no teeshirts.

On to our hotel and Franklin, Tennessee.