Little Car in the Ozarks

One of the things Kacie and I had determined we wanted to do to make the best possible time on our road trip was to bring a box of Nutrigrain bars in the car to serve as breakfast.  Neither of us are big breakfast eaters anyway, and we figured a Nutrigrain bar and a cup of motel coffee was enough to power us through to lunch on most days.   Day 2 of our journey ended up being an exception.

The strains of the Mamma Mia soundtrack punctuated Day 2, as we drove through the pastoral, green hills of Sullivan County, Tennessee.  Cows chomped away on grass as we drove the half hour or so to beautiful Bluff City, Tennessee, home of my ancestors.  Back when they lived there it was known as Union Depot, and I learned through my research that the town changed names quite a few times before settling on Bluff City.  I am descended from the Rhea family, and in the course of my research have found many cousins!

There I am, clutching said cup of motel coffee, right at the city line.  I was told by a more experienced genealogist that my ancestors lived in a little stone house "where the Holston River meets the Southern Railway."  That happened to coincide rather neatly with the area around the welcome sign, and I tried to imagine what it must have looked like then without cars and power lines.  As we drove along, we encountered the Bluff City Diner and we could not resist going in for a quick breakfast.

The food was extraordinary.  Delicious scrambled eggs, bacon and home fries, and our combined bill came to about $10.  I could not believe the low price.  (A New York City native, I often experience culture shock when purchasing things out of state.)

We left Bluff City and my ancestors behind and began the trek west.  Somewhere along the way we gained an hour due to the timezone change, which was nice.  I had never been out of EST.  We took I-40 to Nashville and then headed northwest, passing into Kentucky.

Kentucky was very pretty, with rolling hills and blue-green farmland.  I never thought we would be hungry again after that breakfast, but somehow we were.  It's amazing what sitting in a car and doing nothing will do for you.

Somewhere in Kentucky, we stopped at a Flying J travel plaza for gas and lunch.  There was some kind of sit down restaurant in the rest area that gave travelers the option of ordering a la carte or ordering the buffet. Due to our schedule, we decided to just do a la carte.  I ordered a hot open roast beef sandwich with mashed potatoes.  I received a mountain of food swimming in a sea of thick, brown gravy. It was delicious, but I think I ate about 1/8th of it.  It made me glad we didn't do the buffet.

We crossed from Kentucky into southern Illinois, but there was no conveniently placed "Welcome" sign at the state line.  So, we kept going and eventually crossed the mighty Mississippi.

It was my first time west of the Mississippi River, and I was extremely excited.  Once we got across, we saw the "Welcome to Missouri" sign, which was accessible but a little close to bridge so we did have a few cars zooming by us.

Have you ever wondered exactly where a state line begins?  Well if you are entering Missouri from southern Illinois, fear not.  Someone has helpfully labeled it for you:

Thank you, kind stranger.

Anyway, Missouri was gorgeous.  For the longest time we drove through flat, picturesque farmland before making our way through the winding roads of the Ozarks.  It was sunny and peaceful, and we tuned into a country station for the ride.  Our goal was to end the day in Mansfield, a tiny little town in western Missouri, which happens to be where Laura Ingalls Wilder (author of the Little House series) spent most of her adult life on a farm named Rocky Ridge.

When we got to Mansfield the sun was going down and we found that there were precious few hotels or restaurants in the town, and even fewer that were open.  Kacie ducked into a convenience store and asked for advice.  She told us that in a town called Ava, a few miles south, there was a Super 8 motel which sometimes had a buffet. (?)  We thanked her and decided to stay there, buffet or not.

Well, there was no buffet.  But the woman behind the front desk was lovely and... had KNOWN Laura Ingalls Wilder!!!  We were so excited.  She told us lovely stories about meeting the elderly Laura as a child.

After the long day, we were starving and we seemed to be mostly out of luck.  But in the room, we found an ad for a Pizza Hut and we ordered a pizza to be delivered to the room.  And so, day 2 ended with Pizza Hut and beers in a Super 8 in Ava, Missouri.  We couldn't complain, and we were excited to head to Rocky Ridge the next morning.

Upon the Blue Ridge Mountains...

Two twenty-three year old girls pulled out onto the Capital Beltway from Bethesda, Maryland on July 1st, 2007.  For this first road trip which set the precedent for all that were to come, we had a goal in mind.  In this case, our goal was a small town in Northwestern Kansas called Norton.  As juniors at Dartmouth College, the two of us had somehow heard about a place called the "They Also Ran Gallery" and, given our interest in obscure presidential history, it seemed like a prime candidate for a (semi) cross-country road trip.  First stop on the trip was a ride down Skyline Drive.

Skyline Drive, for those who don't know, is a 105 mile road through the Shenandoah National Park, which is located in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia.  We paid the toll at the Front Royal entrance and proceeded to drive along the winding ridges of the mountains.  I had seen mountains before, obviously, and they always held a sort of mystique for me, but these were something special.  We passed majestic trees, scenic overlooks, and clear, nearly cloudless blue skies that seemed to go on forever. 

Pictured above is the scene from an overlook.  I'm not sure what town that is.  Below is a scene that shows how the Blue Ridge Mountains got their name:

The reflections and shadows give the mountains in the distance a bluish-green tinge that makes them unlike any mountains I've seen.

Occasional mile markers or informational signs dotted our way:

A song my Dad used to sing came into my head as we meandered along the scenic byway.  I murmured the lyrics under my breath.  "Upon the Blue Ridge Mountains... There I'll take my stand..."  As I hummed, I became aware of the car coming to an abrupt stop.  "What the hell?" Kacie and I murmured almost simultaneously.  Several cars were crawling along ahead of us, and as we rounded one of the sharp curves of the parkway, we saw why.  An enormous camper was plugging along at approximately five miles per hour.  It was hard to complain too much, as the roads were steep and sharp with little visibility, but it was hard to remain patient at such speed.  A few cars pulled up behind us, and we formed an odd little caravan on a stretch of road that had probably never seen a traffic jam before  To our relief, we soon saw an exit for the interstate and that concluded our sojourn on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  I-81 it was.

I-81 in Virginia looks pretty much like any interstate you can picture, complete with the huge billboards advertising Cracker Barrel and other such tempting road food.  Due to the camper delay, time was suddenly of the essence, as we really wanted to cross the Tennessee state line that night.  But the Cracker Barrel billboards finally broke us, and we pulled off the road in Christiansburg, Virginia to order heaping plates of fried chicken and mac and cheese.  It was exactly the jolt we needed to get us to the state line just after sunset.

After pulling into a rest area just across the state line and taking stock of where exactly we were, we decided to retire for the night at a Super 8 motel in a town called Kingston, Tennessee.  We did not choose Kingston arbitrarily; one of our goals for the trip was to stop in a town called Bluff City, Tennessee which I had learned through genealogical research was the home of some of my paternal ancestors.

As we checked into the Super 8 we started chatting with the young man behind the desk.  He asked why we were in town and we told him about my ancestry.  It turned out his last name was the same as that of the ancestors I had researched.  To this day I wonder if he could be a distant relative, and my exploration of the area convinced me this was a distinct possibility.  But it had been a long and tiresome day, and by that point all either of us wanted to was climb into bed and sleep off that dizzying drive through the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains.