Days 6 - 9

The next four days of our trip, days 6 through 9, will be spent driving from Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee to Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. We're taking a bit of an out of the way route, which will add an extra day of travel (and lots of miles), but will allow us to visit New Orleans, LA and San Antonio, TX along the way. More on this below.

We'll start by leaving Great Smoky Mountains National Park and head down through Alabama, passing through Birmingham, AL, finally arriving at our destination for the night, Toomsuba, MS. There's not a whole lot to say about this part of our trip, and we don't have any plans to stop anywhere. The goal will simply be to get to our campground for the night, and then just hang out.

On day 7, we travel from Mississippi into Louisiana. Along the way, we're going to stop in New Orleans and take a walk in the French Quarter down Bourbon Street.

The plan is to find a good place to have a Po' Boy for lunch, and then a beignet for dessert. After our visit to New Orleans, we'll continue to our destination for the night, Lafayette, LA.

On day 8 of our trip, we'll be driving from Louisiana to San Antonio, Texas. I'm hoping that we'll arrive early enough in the afternoon to enable to go downtown to see The Alamo.

The San Antonio Mission Riverwalk trail is a 10-mile paved trail that runs alongside the San Antonio River and connects the four Missions that make up the San Antonio Mission National Historical Park. I'm really hoping that we'll be able to ride our bikes on this trail to go see the missions.

We'll spend the night in San Antonio and prepare for the last day of this segment of our trip.

On the morning of day 9, we'll leave San Antonio and drive to Carlsbad, NM. Unlike the prior two days, this day will be another long drive, with nothing much to see or do. After arriving in Carlsbad, we'll probably spend the night relaxing to prepare for our visit to Carlsbad Caverns National Park the next morning.