Running Chick

Greetings from Vidalia, GA, where it’s hot and humid. 

Our first night on the road, we stayed in a Fairfield Inn that in Marion, IL was so new it still had the wrapping paper on it.

It’s been raining so much in Southern Illinois that they are currently under flood warnings.

Some of these cows decided to take advantage of the flooding and go for a little swim.

Lots of boring stuff later, we were going through the mountains close to Chattanooga, TN.

Yikes.

We smelled this guy before we saw him. His brakes were smoking bad.

I was secretly hoping he’d use one of the runaway truck ramps and provide me with an awesome photo opportunity, but alas he just rode the brakes all the way down the hill. Boo.

Here’s the Southern Belle dining boat cruising along Tennessee River.

On the other side of Chattanooga, this giant thing was causing a major traffic snarl.

It’s a partial dump truck box being towed by a semi. Pilot cars were leading and following.

It took up close to two lanes, it was enormous.

We started seeing carnage from the storms that swept through Alabama and Tennessee.

We cruised through downtown Atlanta with no trouble and were doing a lot of gloating when we came over a hill and ran into the end of this mess.

It looked a lot worse than it was (Google Maps only gave it a yellow on the traffic jam scale), and we were delayed by maybe 15 minutes. I was able to snap a picture of a plane taking off from the Atlanta airport, but I can’t remember if it was before or after the traffic jam.

We started seeing signs of damage from the storm that swept through last week. Downed interstate signs, guardrails ripped up and trees sheared off. Scary stuff.

We stopped a few times for shopping and dining and rolled into town around 10pm, road weary and glad to not be moving.