Just driving today, nothing else. Thankfully despite the misty rain of the morning, it wasn’t too cold so I could make breakfast outside. I was on the road around 9am and I stayed on it until 6pm, I think I covered around 500 miles, filling up with petrol twice in one day! This is something I have not done since starting this journey and just shows how much I detest bad weather. I am running now, running towards warmer pastures.

It took me the morning to drive through Arkansas, then the afternoon and part of the night to get halfway across Tennessee. I stopped for lunch in Memphis, the home of blues, rock ‘n’ roll and The King. At the visitor’s centre, I enquired at the front desk so I didn’t feel so bad about using their bathroom and a lady there directed me to two of the main sights of Memphis: where JKF was shot and Elvis’ childhood home.

After making lunch and strolling around the visitor’s center to stretch my legs, I went first to the JFK shooting place and couldn’t quite find it so carried on. Being in the vicinity was enough for me. Memphis looked like a cute little town that a pedestrian could wander for a day, but not on a day like this! I took a few highways to get to Elvis’ place, “Graceland”. When I got there, I saw a huge carpark with people manning toll booths, so I turned around straight away. It would have been cool to do a driveby, but I wasn’t keen for more than that, especially if I had to pay for parking! So that was the sum of my Memphis experience.

Back on the I-40 heading east, I listened to a new podcast called “Accussed”. Similar to “Serial”, it followed the story of an unsolved murder case. By the time I’d passed through Nashville, it was over and they hadn’t reached a conclusion, so another frustrating non-ending. I’m done now with these sorts of podcasts, I’ll need to find something else to entertain my drives. I really don’t like highway driving. While I got to see some farmland, I spent most of my time concentrating on overtaking trucks and keeping far enough behind them to be out of their wake, which makes my bike rock violently from side to side. The incessant rain didn’t help things either. I suppose with the rain it was a good day to just be in the car because there wasn’t much else for me to do.

I eventually made it to a rest stop a few dozen miles east of Nashville and have made camp, despite the “No Overnight Camping” sign. I will plead ignorance at what they mean by “camping” if I am disturbed for surely, even though there is a bed in my car, I cannot be prosecuted for resting in a rest area.