Memorial Day Traffic?

As with many Americans I am no stranger to holiday traffic.  The dreaded three day weekend beast of clogged highways and trips that drag on forever, which is the inevitable result of the influx of road travelers.  It's a fact of life that Americans have lived with for decades.  I was dreading it myself prior to the ride from Nashville to Memphis on this Memorial Day weekend.

I had originally planned to leave for home on Sunday thus beating the impending traffic jam of the long weekend altogether, but my plans changed like plans tend to do and my wife and I were set to leave on Monday.  I decided that I wasn't going to be anxious or mad about having to battle my way through the hoards of vehicles.  I wanted to be calm and relaxed.  And I was.

The wife and I started out from Nashville shortly after 4pm.  I figured we'd be in store for a 5 or 6 hour ride due to traffic.  I was wrong and happily so.

There was the normal Nashville traffic and I figured that soon we'd be bumper to bumper.  But it never came.  We drove smoothly through city after city with hardly a slowdown.  My long feared traffic jam never materialized and if anything the road was unusually empty.  I've been in worse traffic on that long stretch of I-40 at 10pm on a weekday.  I'm not sure why there was no traffic, but there wasn't.