Picking up speed

Short post this morning, as we need to get on the road.

We are at the Wal-Mart in Dyersburg, Tennessee (map). After we left the Canal campground yesterday afternoon, we had a short drive to Benton, Kentucky for fuel. I had planned to stop for fuel today, at the Flying-J in West Memphis ($2.839), but we were tipped off that the Wal-Mart in Benton would be cheaper. As it turns out, the posted price was $2.779, with another $0.03 off for using a Wal-Mart card. So I marched into the store, put $600 on a pre-pay card we carry for just this purpose, and we spent half an hour at the pump putting 220 gallons in.

The person who tipped me off was Bryce Gaston, AKA "Busted Knuckle" from the bus conversion boards, and half an hour after we fueled up we were at his company garage in Union City, Tennessee. We had a nice dinner in town with Bryce, his folks, and Dallas and Cat, also from the bus boards. Bryce and his folks operate the KY Lakeside Travel bus company, so we drove to dinner in a bus, natch. (A real bus. The kind with 53 seats.)

While we were at Bryce's, we got the follow-up call we had been waiting for, from the vet in Little Rock. He had looked over the 5 megabytes of files I had emailed him (radiographs and ultrasounds), and asked if we could actually bring Opal in this afternoon. He wants to do another blood panel, and start her on steroids. He will then keep her overnight, for surgery tomorrow.

That's fine with us, but we had not planned on it when we made the stop in Union City. We'll need to stick to the freeway today to make our schedule, and we also rolled out of Union City last night, rather than spending the night at the Busted Knuckle Garage. We only made it as far as Dyersburg, but anything is good considering I am more of a night person than a morning person.

Also for schedule reasons, we will avoid Memphis by leaving here to the west and crossing the Mississippi on I-155. From there we'll likely take US412 west to US67 south into Little Rock, rather than the Interstate.