Josh, Anne-Marie, and Aylia Colwell’s Gazette

Day 9 (Tuesday July 10):

In the morning I take Dusty for a walk around the hotel. A friendly man
stops his pickup truck to ask if she is a poodle. We have a nice chat about
how great poodles are. When I tell him we’re on our way to Orlando I brace
for a repeat of last night’s cold splash of water, but he just says, “nice.”

We hit the road at 8:30 with our egg mcmuffins in hand. It is a guilty
pleasure. We hit our first metropolitan area since Denver at Kansas City.
Dealing with traffic is a bit of a shock. At some point along the road
we stop for gas and sandwiches at an unpleasantly loud truck stop with
major construction underway. We make reasonably good time until we reach
St. Louis where we are hit with both bad traffic and heavy rain. This slows
us down considerably, and we stop to take a break and let the rain pass.

The animals continue to be real troopers, though Dusty gets very antsy
every time the car stops. She really does not want to be left out of anything.
For dinner we make another gas-and-fast-food stop, this time for Wendy’s.
It is the classic American interstate experience: McDonald’s, Subway, Wendy’s,
and 660 miles traveled. The traffic and weather reduce our average speed for
the day to 55 miles per hour, compared with about 70 miles per hour
yesterday. We stop for the night in Clarksville Tennessee, about 40 miles
before Nashville. We have about 750 miles remaining, so it looks unlikely
we will make it tomorrow. Still, if the traffic isn’t bad and we get an
early start it is possible.

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