Greetings from Rolla, MO

Hey y'all! I'm currently in a Dairy Queen believe it or not. I needed some sugar to keep me awake on the road, and I figured what the hell, I'll see if there are any Wi-Fi signals in the area.

Score.

It seems like I can get a Wi-Fi signal almost anywhere. Lots of fast food places have signals now, and even some gas stations. If those fail, I can pull into the parking lot of a hotel like Best Western or Comfort Suites, which almost always offer free Wi-Fi for me to pirate.

Anyway, I'm on my way to Oklahoma now. I spent yesterday evening with some relatives in Bardstown, KY kinda sorta near Louisville, KY. They were really nice and accommodating despite my really late notice that I was dropping by. They even gave me a mini-cooler once they found out I was drinking warm water and gatorade. A real meal was also nice to have.

I have spent the better part of the past 2 weeks in the Kentucky/Tennessee area. Wow, right? There's a lot of stuff to around there if you're an outdoorsy person. And in those 2 weeks I didn't even scratch the surface of all the natural beauty there was to visit.

Hey and I wanted to thank Louise for letting me stay at her place a few nights here and there between some of my excursions. Not only was it nice to save money, but having a couch instead of the ground to sleep on was much needed. Thanks, tupac.

I have yet to post a few summaries of some things I have done. I took a camping trip by myself to the Smokies (yes, I went there twice). All the stuff that happened on that venture is just too much to have one post on. I wrote up a summary of my experience and it's about 10 pages long in Microsoft Word, so I'm going to have to either post an abridged version (which will take some time) or post it in several sections. I am leaning towards the latter, and may even post it immediately after this post.

I also took a trip to Dollywood. That merits its own post for sure. I haven't even written anything on that yet, but I've thought about it a lot. I'll post that soon.

You see? I knew this would happen. I knew I would fall behind and be overwhelmed with talking about everything. At least I'm being upfront about it, eh? Do I get any brownie points for that?

Hope everyone is having a great summer. The weather has been beautiful wherever I have gone so far. Never a day above 90, and not with any substantial humidity. I've been lucky.

More to come...