Texas to Tennessee

Yesterday morning we left the Dallas area and, after a stop at the Buc-ee’s in Royce City, headed east on I-30 to Arkansas. There was a lot of construction on both I-30 and I-635, which we used to get around Dallas.

In the afternoon we stopped at the William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home NHS in Hope Arkansas. This is a fairly small national park site, consisting of the house the President grew up in and an adjacent home that was converted into a visitor center. We watched a film where he and others reminisced about his childhood, then we took a tour of the house. It took about an hour to see everything, after which we continued up to Little Rock, where we got on I-40 east.

In the evening we made it to Memphis, where we stopped at the Bass Pro Pyramid. It was pretty cool inside, with a large store and a hotel, and an elevator up to the observation deck, which has a bar and a restaurant in addition to balconies that have a great view of the Mississippi River and downtown Memphis. We stayed the night nearby. 

This morning we continued on I-40 to Nashville, where we stopped to see the Parthenon in Centennial Park. Susan and I had stopped here before in 2016, but arrived too late to go inside. A recreation of the structure from ancient Athens, it was originally built for an exposition in 1897, then rebuilt as a permanent structure in the 1920’s. 

The original Parthenon contained a giant statue of Athena, and one was added to Nashville’s version in 1990. The building also contains an art museum, and lots of information on the construction of the building and the statue. In the afternoon we continued east, stopping at Buc-ee’s in Crossville and Sevierville. We arrived in Pigeon Forge this evening.