Day 7 - Journey into The South

Set off at 7am for one of the longest drives of the whole trip – 12 hours to Nashville. The scenery was stunning - snow covered mountains and lots of foresty bits.

We swapped as drivers every 2 hours to keep fresh, but we both really enjoyed the driving. Americans seem to be very good drivers, although they don’t tend to indicate when changing lanes on the highway very frequently.

On the approach to Nashville, all you could see was a sky full of stars. It got me thinking about how long it had been since I’d seen stars. They were beautiful.

We found a motel right next to Nashville’s downtown area and checked in before heading out to try one of Lonely Planet’s food recommendations – Princes Fried Chicken. Bit of a drive from central Nashville and not so much of a restaurant as a hole in wall, incredibly busy takeaway joint. Took the food back to the motel and tucked in. It was very tasty and my ‘medium’ was very spicy. Hate to imagine what the ‘xtra hot’ would’ve been like.

Turned the news on to find massive snow warnings and freeeeezzzing temps for tomorrow.

Day 5: The first drive! We arrive in Washington

Woke up early – packed, hit the streets to exchange more cash and get a sat nav for the journey. Ended up bartering for one by accident in Times Square – got a $550 discount, but still was over what we wanted to pay. Macy’s had a few but no staff to sell them. So we started our cross country journey with no sat nav and no map... lucky we asked the rental place how to get to Washington... We decided to go analogue on this trip - we ended up buying a map at the next service station.

Didn’t realise we’d go through so many states on the way to Washington – one, Delaware, we only just skimmed, but Lucy was insistent on getting a fridge magnet from every state we go through. So we took a detour into Newark, Delaware - which was a mainly university town – all to find a magnet!

Ended up in a big truck stop in Maryland (just over the border) and managed to get a Delaware and Maryland magnet and advice from a big trucker.

Got into Washington at about 6.30pm to be confronted with a hideous one-way system – we ended up finding a motel and then going to Wendy’s for dinner. Last night sushi and cocktails in Manhattan, tonight fried chicken in a roadside motel. Love it!