Made it!

We've haven't had internet access the past couple days, so it may be a surprise to see that we managed to go all the way from Amarillo to New Jersey in only 3 days. That's right!
On day 4, we went from Amarillo to Oklahoma City to Little Rock. In Oklahoma City we walked around the 'bricktown' area (touristy, I think) and ate at Toby Keith's restaurant (where else?). In Little Rock we drove into downtown and were just about to give up on finding anything when we stumbled into the happening area - we parked and got a pizza and hung around for a couple hours. It was a very fun evening, and we even met someone who was driving from the East coast back home to Oakland. All paths led to Little Rock.
Day 5 was from Little Rock to Memphis to the Great Smoky Mountains. In Memphis we walked to Beale Street, which is full of restaurants and music venues (also touristy). I was there a few years ago - the street is closed to traffic and it becomes a big outdoor party on the weekends. We also walked (on the advice of the guy from Little Rock) to the Civil Rights Museum, which is built around the motel where Martin Luther King Jr was shot. It's full of exhibitions and stories from 400+ years of the struggle for Civil Rights....a very interesting museum. We actually planned to camp outside Knoxville, but somehow ended up camping in the Great Smoky Mountains, about 40 miles south. They live up to their name - as soon as we got near them (~1:00 AM), everything was covered in fog. We found the campsite and fortunately there were sites left. On the drive out in the morning we got to see everything we missed on the way in. The mountains are huge! Knoxville's elevation is around 800 feet, but the highest peaks in the park were well over 6000. I had gotten used to the Santa Cruz mountains, but these were really quite a bit bigger. Surprising to find stuff like that in Tennessee! Also, Dollywood is just outside the park, as well as a sprawling entertainment area - theaters and amusement parks and restaurants...all in a town called Pigeon Forge. We thought it would be all forest in the area, but instead it's a world of Tennessee entertainment. Who knew.
Day 6+ was a doozy. We originally planned to take I-81 North out of Knoxville, but instead decided it would be nice to take the scenic (and somewhat parallel) Blue Ridge Parkway out of Asheville, NC. It certainly is scenic, but the speed limit is only 45, and the plentiful curves limit you to around 35 most of the time. Three hours and only 100 miles later, we took an hour-long detour over to I-81. The result - 4 hours to get 120 miles from Knoxville. We were afraid it would be a lost day until we got our second wind. We stormed through Virginia and looked for a campsite in Maryland around 12:30 AM. Finding none, I decided we might as well try to make the ~220 miles from Maryland to Harrisburg to New Jersey, and finish the journey that night. So, we did. We arrived at Alicia's parents' house in New Jersey at 4:47 AM.
Why I am awake and writing this, I do not know. I have a bunch of pictures, and now that I've got a normal internet connection, I'll put up some of them. Have a nice weekend everyone!