Onward toward to east coast – another day on the road, driving through Nashville and Knoxville, TN. In another time, we would have loved to stop in these cities, but settled for a glimpse from the highway.

Knoxville was the home of the World’s Fair in 1982 (who knew?). There are still some remnants of that in downtown Knoxville. One of these is the Sunsphere – a gold glass sphere 26 stories high. The glass is coated with 24-carat gold, making it a striking sight in the city. There is an elevator that you can take to the top observation platform, but we just admired it from the outside. The Simpson’s fans may remember Bart Simpson visiting the Sunshpere, only to find it had been converted to Wigshpere.

Camping options in this area were harder to come by. We were surprised to see that campgrounds had no open spots. We drove by a couple of these and they were packed! I jumped onto the Hipcamp site and found us a spot in a cow field south of Knoxville. The directions were to turn into the field, make sure you close the gates behind you, and camp anywhere. The cows weren’t in these fields that night, and we parked next to the barn. There was another group camping on the other side of the barn. No luxuries, but we don’t need any extras when travelling in our cozy Scamp. We chose to ignore the cell tower at the end of the field, and it was so foggy in the morning that we couldn’t even see it.