The weather has changed. There is a very large low pressure area sitting over most of Kentucky and Tennessee. Boo!

Last night we ventured across the road to the Texas Roadhouse (or roadkill) as Andy calls it. It is an American chain steakhouse restaurant. It plays. Ountry music and shows a variety of sports channels on screens around the place. And serves excellent steak!

We both had a 6oz fillet (the smallest available) as we. Opulent face a 23oz porterhouse! The menu shows the calorie Lunt, the latter being 1050!! Ours was very good and we enjoyed a proper American experience!

Today we set off in the rain for Chattanooga. The road winds through the Daniel Boone forest. Daniel Boone was an American pioneer, explorer, woodsman, and frontiersman, whose frontier exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. Boone is most famous for his exploration and settlement of what is now Kentucky. It was probably very scenic but the rain and the low cloud prevented us from seeing much. Every now and then we drove into a serious downpour which restricted visibility even more. This carried on for the whole 180 miles so it wasn’t great.

We stopped at a diner for a coffee. Once again it was a very religious diner - that’s what they seem to do in these here parts! The lady is obviously not used to tourists stopping for a coffee and not eating anything. She wasn’t even sure what to charge us but, in the end, $2 seemed to cover it!

And so to Chattanooga where, to our surprise it stopped raining. Not only that but the sun came out! Ed at the visitor information stand was a mine of information and we now have tomorrow planned. Today, we had a bite of lunch and then walked across the Walnut Street bridge. Thanks to Wikipedia I can inform you as follows:

The bridge's main spans are pin-connected Pennsylvania through truss spans. The top chord of these truss spans are configured in five sections, making the spans similar to the Camelback truss design. The bridge is historically significant as an extremely long and old example of its type; according to the Historic American Engineering Record: "The bridge was apparently the first non-military highway bridge across the Tennessee River."

Following this, we caught the free electric shuttle bus to the Chattanooga Choi Choo. The train is there on track 29 although most of the carriages are awaiting the raising of $14m to undertake a full restoration. Younger readers may wish to avail themselves of Google in this case!

We then headed for our AirBnB. It is in what we have chosen to describe as ‘an improving neighbourhood’. The building doesn’t look great (certainly not as good as the pictures) but the apartment is acceptably satisfactory! If a little in need of some improvement. Well, you can’t win ‘em all!

We went out to dinner and Andy chose a special - crab cakes benedict. This was fine except the poached eggs were hard! This was mentioned to the waiter and the owner came to apologise and offer us a free dessert. Andy suggested a glass of wine would sort things but apparently state law prevents a restaurant offering a customer a free alcoholic drink. What rubbish! Anyway in the end he settled for a free chocolate mousse. In a glass!

And so ends Friday. Y’all enjoy the weekend!!