Tennessee and back in the Miata
1906 miles round trip to east TN and back in a Miata!
All went well except for when I really needed the cruise control in the long stretch of flat Mississippi flood plain, it decided to quit working. Holding one's foot and ankle in the same position for several hours can get old quickly.
It was mostly interstate the whole trip, with northern Alabama having the nicest stretch of road. Driving with the top down opens up the senses to the sights and smells of the road. Kept smelling something sweet and realized it was the honeysuckle in the trees on either side of the highway. My wife asked if I could smell the pines and sure enough I got a whiff or two as we drove on. In fact it kept getting stronger and stronger...right up until I passed the eighteen wheeler with a load of pine bark mulch.:D
Louisiana has apparently found a novel way to balance the budget. Every rest stop from border to border was closed and blocked off with concrete barriers, and they no longer remove roadkill, it just gets pushed to the shoulder to decompose.(speaking of the sights and smells!) Seriously, you've never seen so many armadillos, possum, skunks, dogs, cats, deer, etc...some of them so far gone the bones were sticking out of the skins.
Coming home, with just a little over 300 miles to go, I got a stone chip just a 1/4" from the edge of the windshield, which promptly spread across the middle of the line of sight on the driver's side::Rant:: which resulted in my trying to focus above or below it the rest of the way.
Driving the twisty little county roads in the foothills of the Smokies was the best. There's nothing remotely close to it here in Texas.
