10/31/2011 - Happy Halloween! Today's spooky journey would take Kevin and I from Danville, KY to Beesmer, AL. Mother nature decided that she'd trick us rather than treat us to begin the day. As we pulled out of the Super 8 this morning we were greeted by rain. We pulled to the gas station across the street, fueled up, and donned our rain gear. We rode for about an hour in drizzle but then it cleared up around Lake Cumberland. It was just in time for us to get stuck behind a truck stacked with hay bales. That wouldn't have been so bad but it was on some of the most twisty roads we encountered today and robbed us of the chance to attack the curves at full speed. By the time we got around the truck the sun had come out and it was starting to warm up so we pulled over and stowed our rain gear.
We crossed over into Tennessee and promptly missed the turn for TN-111 and instead mistakenly continued on US-127. It wasn't that big of a mistake because they merged back together towards the bottom of the state. Maybe we can hit TN-111 on the way home to see if it is any more scenic that US-127. 127 was pretty nice. I think we hit Tennessee right at the peak of the fall colors. The trees on the mountains were gorgeous against the blue sky of the afternoon.
We finally ended up crossing into Alabama at about 5:00. We got to a town called Guntersville right about when trick-or-treat started. It was fun rolling through a small town and seeing all of the kids out in costume. The smell of campfires lingered in the air and it was very autumn like.
There wasn't a lot to see after we got through Guntersville and there was no place to stop for the evening so we rode another 90 miles after dark until we got to Birmingham. Once we got to Birmingham we hopped on the interstate for the express purpose of finding a hotel. We got off at the first exit with hotels that we found, but it was another 20ish miles away on a really crappy highway I-20/I-59. It was all chunked up and under construction. I was certain that either Kevin or I was going to get a flat tire. We finally stopped at a Comfort Inn in Bessmer, AL. After checking in and getting settled, we walked across the street and had a nice relaxing dinner at Applebee's. Exhaustion was setting in and within 15 minutes of getting back to the room Kevin was fast asleep. I banged out this blog post real quick and I'm now headed to bed myself. The adventure continues tomorrow.
