Dateline: Jackson, TN

At the World's Fair Park in Knoxville, TN

As I write this in a decaying Howard Johnson's in Jackson, Tennessee, the temperature outside at 2130 hours is still a muggy 82°F/28°C, after having reached a high of 99°F/37°C. It's only our second day on the Great American Road Trek, but with the recent Supreme Court rulings on gun rights and abortion, it feels like we're in a desperate race to outrun the reactionary forces that seem poised to overturn many of the positive steps this country has made since the 1960's. Sooner or later, however, we're going to run out of space (and time) when we reach the Pacific Ocean. Perhaps when we arrive in the Pacific Northwest, we should just keep going, crossing over into the comparative sanity of British Columbia.

But as of this moment, we're in the Bible Belt, where masks have stopped being worn, and middle-aged women sport Let's Go Brandon T-shirts. Our sojourn into the South started with our departure yesterday morning from Falls Church. While packing up our Honda Accord, we came across our old Lithuanian license plates, hidden away in the inner recesses of the trunk:

The drive was a tedious one, as we transitioned from Interstate 66 to I-81, before merging onto I-40 heading west soon after leaving Virginia and crossing into Tennessee, with only occasional breaks at freeway rest areas:

There was this bizarre sight on I-81 just before Bristol, VA. I learned later from a friend via Facebook that this was none other than the "Lady in the Lake", returning to Elberta, Alabama after being repaired in Virginia:

We ended up getting a room for the night at a Best Western in Morristown, TN. For dinner we strolled over to a Cracker Barrel next door. As we were getting ready to go inside, a woman with the thickest southern drawl I'd ever heard in real life asked me a question. She had to repeat it to me twice before I realized she was asking if the Best Western was expensive (I assume she must have seen us walking over from there). I've been to Scotland and Yorkshire, and those accents sounded like the English heard on BBC news broadcasts in comparison to this woman whom I assume was a fellow native English speaker. As Shu-E pointed out, it was easier understanding people in lands where English is considered a foreign tongue!

Once in Cracker Barrel, I was surprised to learn two things: beer was on the menu, and those brews only consisted of Bud, Bud Lite, Miller Lite, Michelob Ultra and Blue Moon. And Pabst Blue Ribbon. The ironic hipster in me was desperate for a beer after a long day behind the wheel, so I went with the PBR. It was a shame I'd left my MAGA hat and "Stop the Steal" shirt back at the hotel:

 

Catfish, with mashed potatoes and green beans:

Determined not to repeat the monotony of the previous day's drive, this morning we stopped at the World's Fair Park in Knoxville to visit the Sunsphere:

A gold orb atop a 266-foot (81.1 meters)-high tower, the fourth floor observation deck provides a 360°-view of the city (the greenish hue the result of the tinted glass):

Amber tries her hand at a vintage Pac-Man game:

The Tennessee River can be glimpsed in the distance:

Yes, the 1982 World's Fair was staged in Knoxville, Tennessee, and by all accounts was a tremendous success. One of the captions on the interior wall described the event as the last successful American-held expo - it turns out the 1984 edition held in New Orleans ended in bankruptcy:

A final look at the Sunsphere before departing Knoxville:

For lunch we stopped at Lefty's Bar-B-Q, serving up barbeque dishes in Crossville, TN since 1982. My wife and daughter had ham and pulled pork melts, respectively, while your humble scribe opted for the pulled pork sandwich, with green beans and potato salad as sides, and all washed down with sweet tea (of course):

Amber and I shared a "fudge pie" for dessert:

Apparently, the seamstress couldn't think of anything for the letter Q. "Quest", perhaps?:

We reached Nashville by the middle of the afternoon. Celebrated as the home of country music and the Grand Ole Opry, we made a beeline instead for the suburbs, stopping for a look at an independent bookstore. My appreciation for country music ends with Johnny Cash, while my daughter has even less of a liking for the genre. We spent the drive between Morristown and Knoxville this morning desperately working the FM radio scan for any station that was playing modern country music (what non-country stations we did find played a strange mix of modern hits and tunes from the 1980's): 

It was a school board in Tennessee that earlier this year voted to ban Maus from its 8th-grade curriculum, in another example of the downward American cultural spiral:

To cap off our brief stay in relatively progressive Nashville, we purchased refreshments for the road from a bubble tea shop before plunging back into the heart of rural Tennessee:

And this is how we ended up this evening in Jackson. For dinner we went to Redbone's Grill and Bar, where I had bayou pasta and a real-to-goodness locally-brewed IPA:

Oh, and some key lime pie for dessert. Take that, waistline!:

Tennessee may be in the Bible Belt, but it sure seemed like there were a lot of adult toy shops located along Interstate 40.

To be continued...