Our exciting adventure to East Tennessee....

That sounds like an oxymoron cause East Tennessee is not that exciting, especially when you have lived there most of your life, which I did before I moved to Nashville in 1998. The exciting part was getting out of Nashville. We almost turned around and came home, but we stuck through and ended up in Knoxville around 7:30 EST, we left home (the first time) at 1:15 CST! Yep.

First off, that morning I talked to my friend Lisa, who we would be staying with that night before we headed off to our cabin. Well, she said on the news that Nashville was supposedly running out of gas. I told her that a couple of stations had been out most of the week but other stations had plenty and we shouldn't have a problem. Little did I know that there actually was a shortage. We had no idea until we kept attempting to buy gas...and there was none, or there were really, really long lines.

But let me back up. The first time we left home was around 1:15. We got on Briley Pkwy and I realized that I left all the paperwork at home that we would need to check in. We had won this trip and it had some requirements so I thought, just to be safe, we better go back and get it in case it was required.

So we did. This was the second time we passed a gas station by our house that had a small line for buying gas. We passed it again going out after we had picked up our paperwork. We over-confidently felt that it was ridiculous that all these people were in line to buy gas. Surely, further out in the city it would not be this way. So, we opted not to stop and buy gas there to fill out tank up for the trip. BIG MISTAKE. But hindsight is 20/20.

So, we decided to try Lebanon Rd....same problem. Then Donelson Pike....same problem and still those pesky lines. Again, being confident that there was gas somewhere without a line we
tredged on.

We got to Mt. Juliet and our "low gas" light was still on. We decided that the Lebanon exit, past Mt. Juliet for those of you that don't live here, would be he best place to buy gas. We passed the Mt. Juliet exit only to be stopped by traffic. I mean a dead stop. It was not moving and some people were backing back up on the exit ramp to get back on Mt. Juliet Rd. We decided we should do that too and go Hwy 70 over to 109 and bypass whatever was going on. It was a good decision too, and I will tell you why a little later.

So, we passed a Kroger (with a long line) but at this point we had no choice but to stop cause we had no gas in our car. Remember, we are traveling with a 2 year old, stuck in a car seat. We had already been in the car about an hour and a half. But he really did great overall. After an hour of sitting in line, I got out of the car to use the restroom and to go buy some snacks. When I came back, there were still two cars ahead of ours so I took Carter out of the car to walk around a bit. About 20 minutes later Greg pulls up at the Kroger store filled up with gas.

Whew, what a relief. We just thought this was crazy.

So, we get on Hwy 70. It is now 3:45. Yep. Over 2 hours into our trip and we have barely left the Davidson County line. I called my friend Lisa and told her what was going on. She was shocked (so were we). We told her we would call her once we got back on the interstate and at that point, we didn't know when that would be exactly.

So then we moved on to the next obstacle, which was figuring out what was going on on the interstate. Greg called the traffic info line a couple of times and finally got information that there had been a wreck on mile marker something or other. We had no clue where that was but we got on Hwy 109 and was praying we had passed the wreck.

And we did. Just barely, and it was a good thing because traffic was completely stopped on I-40 E out of Nashville. They had closed the interstate. We would have been stuck in traffic for hours and if we had waited to buy gas in Lebanon, we would have run out of gas on the interstate. Luckily, we have AAA, but heck, how would they have gotten to us????

The rest of our trip was uneventful (thank goodness!) and it ended up taking us 5 hours to get to Knoxville, which should have just taken just less than three. Whew!!!

I will post pictures later. Oh, and we filled up on gas in Lebanon on the way home cause we knew the "gas shortage" was still going on.

Crazy that Nashville is the ONLY city that this is happening too????????? So now we are hoping people stop topping off their tanks every time they see a gas station open with gas. If everyone would just chill out this mini "crisis" will be over.