Northbound TN I-24

The trip back home to Cape has been mostly uneventful. Getting out of Florida was a wet slog, but traffic was light and my Rain-X meant that I rarely had to run my windshield wipers.

I’m not a big Stephen King fan, but I loaded one his books in my MP3 player and have had the miles click off listening to the horrible happenings in Desperation, NV. Maybe they’re clicking off so quickly because the book dampens any desire you have to go on backroads through desolate countryside.

Most of Thursday was spent escaping Georgia. It’s kind of disheartening to have to go through l0ng states like Florida and Georgia. You have a better feeling of making progress when you’re going through skinny states like Tennessee (if you’re going north and south, that is).

Atop Nickajack Lake bridge

Traffic was moving fine until I got to Atlanta at rush hour. Boy, RUSH hour is a misnomer. They should call it Crawl Hour.

I rounded a curve north of Chattanooga and mentally kicked myself for not being ready to shoot a high railroad bridge that crosses the highway.

I decided I’d better take advantage of the few minutes of daylight I had left to capture the foothills of the eastern Continental Divide.

The photo at the top was taken as we were starting to climb the big bridge over Nickajack Lake, about a third of the way between Chattanooga and Monteagle Pass. The second shot was taken just ever the top of the bridge.

Garish fireworks stand

This fireworks store has always fascinated me, but never enough to get off The Big Road to stop, particularly with a Stephen King horror book playing in the background.

I should be pulling into Cape late Friday afterno0n.

8 Replies to “Northbound TN I-24”

  1. Me and five other of “The Boys” I motorcycle ride with traveled I-24 North last Sunday to Cape from Gatlinburg and the Smokie Mountains. It was a long day’s travel even on a good machine. I used 60’s music to make the miles go by. For some reason the trip back seems so much longer and rougher than the trip down.

  2. Ahhh, I love road trip blogs! I can just feel the miles slip by.
    I’m glad your trip out of Florida was less harrowing than the one we took in January! (I wrote about it in my Jan. 30 blog on the Dexter Daily Statesman website, but I don’t know how to do links…) We were trapped on I-25 for nearly 4 hours, after fog and swamp fire smoke caused an early morning 20-car pile-up that killed ten people.
    We have taken a vow never to be lured off the back roads again!
    Be safe, Ken, and maybe we’ll see you while you’re here!

  3. I love this part of the trip from Mo. to Florida…Nickajack Lake and the mountains thru that area or wonderful for just looking out the window. Send a pciture or two for the Kentucky Lake area too!
    Happy Trails to you! (insert Roy Rogers voice here!)

  4. Ken, I hope you will be in Cape through August 1. I was just home this week and will return on July 30 for the evening. Glad to hear that you take advantage of Rain-X – it is definitely a travelers friend, shunting rain and bugs alike.

  5. Ken, I and my family have made this same trip out of Melbourne, Fla. to Cape at least 75 times over the years but before I-24 was finished we had to go a lot of 2 lane roads in Tenn. & Ky. and early on in the 60’s we had to come up the mountain out of Chattanooga on old 41 highway which was 3-lane. Lot of mdifference from then to now!
    Joe Whitright “45”

  6. Glad you qualified Tennessee as skinny North and South. When we drive from the Metro Washington D.C. area to Cape we have our choice of driving thru Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois into Missouri….or Virginia, Tennessee into Missouri. Tennessee is equal to three states East and West. We just drove home early this month, from Chicago to St. Louis (we had to get Mary’s Mom to a BART shuttle) to Herndon, Virginia straight through! 22 and 1/2 hours of driving and I did all the driving because I don’t like to ride. Mary was processing the photos we’d taken of visits, a Family Reunion and our Grandson’s Baptism in Chicago.

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