Henderson, Kentucky

Wednesday, July 20 - We're finally on the road again.  We left Mike and Nancy's about 10:30 (EST) this morning, traveling through Tennessee on I-24, and we made it all the way to the Kentucky/Indiana border at Henderson, Kentucky, just across the Ohio River from Evansville, Indiana.  We had a good visit with Mike and Nancy; we watched the video about Uncle Junior that they showed at his funeral, Mike drove us around the countryside, we played cards, and Nancy even got out old picture albums from the early 70s when we used to all go camping together.  It was fun trying to remember who, what, when and where.  I woke up this morning with a headache from laughing so much.

We hit Nashville just before noon, and passed the Titan's football stadium which is pretty close to the Interstate.  It was 92 degrees, so we did not do any sightseeing in Nashville -- we'll save that for another trip.

At the first Clarksville, TN exit, Joe pulled off so he could put some more tape around his side window.  His whistle was back, and driving him crazy. 

We no sooner got back on the highway when I saw a billboard that there was a White Castle hamburger joint just up the road, so we made another stop and had lunch.  This was on Wilma Rudolph Boulevard (an Olympic gold medal runner born in Clarksville in 1940).  I have a poster of Wilma Rudolph at home, so this was worthy of a picture.

This interstate carries a lot of truck traffic, about like I-10 between Phoenix and California, so we were glad to get off it onto US 41A at Clarksville.  There were also a lot of RVs on this interstate, and I noticed when we passed some of them that Joe has less gray hair than most of those drivers (yes, we do occasionally pass somebody!).  We were looking for a place to dump our tanks, so we drove through a truck stop here.  Their dump was shut down, but there was a tobacco field right behind the place.

We passed by some of the property of the Ft. Campbell military base, home of the Special Ops forces that took out Osama ben Laden, along with the Navy Seal team.  The 101st Airborne Division, known as the Screaming Eagles, is based here.  This is where President Obama came to thank the troops for that victory, back in May.

We saw 3 wild turkeys right along the road in Hopkinsville, KY, our only wildlife for the day.  Our intent was to drive all the way to Vincennes today, but we needed to dump our tanks and we had picked out a state park in Henderson, KY to do that.  By the time we got there, we decided that was enough for the day, so we just camped here.  As we get closer to Vincennes, we see that gas is on the rise.  We filled up on the Kentucky/Indiana border for $3.579, but that is about 40 cents less than it was when we came through here in April.  So we got off the road about 3:30, having driven 207 miles.  It was 95 degrees, and back here, that is hot, hot, hot.  Joe walked over to the restroom thinking he might take a shower over there, but he said it was like a sauna in there.  So after we cooled out in the RV for an hour or so, he took me over to Evansville to the casino for the evening!!!  No, we didn't come out as winners, but we spent a few hours there, and had a good time.  We are about 20 miles from the Spottsville, KY area, where my mother grew up, so we might make a short side trip over there in the morning, before we head out to Vincennes, which is only about 50 miles.