May 3

Well, we just missed the huge storm that had tornados in Arkansas over night. Part of the storm drifted to the north and another just to the south. We started from Knoxville and got into rain, but it was only moderately heavy for about 30 minutes and then began to ease up and had completely stopped in an hour. Shortly thereafter, we were in sunshine again and had a beautiful day.

Tomtom did direct us west to Nashville, where we got the car serviced at a Midas shop. Even a bit of shopping and we were still back on the road in less than 3 hours. We got to a place just east of Little Rock, Arkansas for the night (over 800 kms--about 500 miles). I figure that by tomorrow night, we should be somewhere between San Antonio and Laredo, Texas. As a result, we should cross into Mexico on Monday and probably get to Monterey, Mexico by the night. That means that we should be in Ajijic some time in the afternoon on Tuesday, May 6th. We have made extremely good time. In fact, with the hour we picked up when we crossed he Mississippi River, we stopped early and should have an early night.

Tennessee was lovely, with all the hills and mountains. Of course, everything is very green and well into spring. Arkansas surprised me by being extremely flat. I guess that it is at the southern edge of the Great Plains. There was no sign of the tornados along the I40, although a couple of large billboards were damaged. There was a lot of water in many fields, however.

As mentioned, the route devised by Tomtom surprised me. I had plotted a route to Laredo by Mapquest. It chose to go go south from Knoxville to Chattanooga and on into Alabama. Tomtom is going more northerly, then down through Dallas-->San Antonio-->Laredo. The mileage on both came out almost the same, so that the 2 routes are about the same distance.