Shreveport to Chattanooga (Dec. 6-7)

We set off on another cool and cloudy day. After the dry heat of the southwest, it seems remarkable to see ponds, creeks and mixed conifer and deciduous forest. In fact, this part of Louisiana looks much like the NE, except that the winter season is not as far advanced (by which I mean that some of the deciduous trees still have green or yellow leaves).

Our schedule calls for 2 driving days, making up 8 to 9 hours of actual road time, followed by two days off. This gives us a day to rest and/or attend to maintenance such as shopping and laundry, and a day for sightseeing.

Since the driving was going well, and we needed to restock our food supplies, we decided to stop for the night in the Walmart in Forest MS. Again, this was completely uneventful. It was a bit noisy however, as this Walmart seems to be a popular truck stop – and the truckers come and go all night.

Our original plan had been to stay far enough south to avoid temperatures below 30F. This added a bit of time to the trip and also meant driving through Atlanta – nerve-wracking even without the RV. However, when we checked the weather on Thursday morning, we realized that a cold front was going to plunge well south of Atlanta. By going northeast through Chattanooga, we would at most add one day of frost to the trip, save driving time, and avoid Atlanta traffic. As well, we figured that if it did snow, we would be better off farther north, where they have the equipment to clear it.

So after Birmingham AL (which is bigger than I expected and looks rather gritty from the highway) we headed north to Tennessee and the Smoky Mountains.

It turned out that this was a great choice. Although Chattanooga got a bit of snow, most of the snow was to the south of us. And Chattanooga, although in the 20s at night, was a bit warmer than Atlanta.