Monday, March 4, 2019

Journey Over


Can't believe that our two thousand mile road trip has come to an end. I highly recommend it; it gave me such a better sense of the country and where states are in proximity to each other and what they are like, at least to a small extent. 


Yesterday we drove diagonal across Tennessee, starting in Memphis, all the way into Virginia. We stopped in Nashville and drove past the capitol building, which looks older than the others I’ve seen in the west. We wanted to get fried chicken there, but the line around the chosen place was so long we couldn’t wait. It was a ringing endorsement if I’ve ever seen one, though.

It rained ALL day; we had about an hour total collected time where it wasn’t pouring. Tennessee is a gorgeous state; it’s old school and gothic and I can just see myself getting lost in the hills of the Smoky Mountains to learn all the stories that live there. I kept being astounded by the rocks, the trees, the flooded riverbanks. It’s just so different than anything I’ve seen before. And the same road that we got on in Albuquerque, the I-40, morphed into this. America is a land of many lands.

We stopped for the desired fried chicken in Knoxville, Tennessee, instead. We tried the spicy southern style and the chicken was delicious, although it is my opinion that nothing has ever really been improved by being spicy.

We have been listening to The Boys in the Boat about the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It’s a great read. As LeVar Burton says on his podcast, you can do it, with audiobooks.

We’ve only had one major traffic holdup, and that was for construction. We crossed into Virginia at night and the sign was dark and my hands were shaky, so that’s the first state sign picture that’s not really clear. But you can’t have everything in this life.

We collected the West Virginia license plate, so now we’re down to five missing.


(Isn't this the cutest welcome to a state sign?) 




Later:
Made it all the way to Philadelphia! It was odd when Justin pointed out the Delaware and we recognized it. We’ve been here before.

Today was our most states day with Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. The drive was quite nice; there are so many trees everywhere and we finally had blue skies, something we haven’t had since Texas. Something else we saw for the first time since day two was snow-- nothing crazy but there were patches here and there from northern Virginia on up. We stopped for frozen yogurt in WV, a state I have never much thought about but it was good frozen yogurt.

We took a side trip through some Maryland countryside in order to avoid toll roads because we haven’t figured that out yet. This turned out to be a great choice because the drive was absolutely beautiful. Can’t even imagine how pretty it will be in the spring when the trees are growing. Then we found a collection of old houses with the gables and the porches, you know the type. Old Victorian style houses. We saw the Susquehanna, we saw a hydroelectric plant, it was a lovely break from the interstate traffic. It was picturesque. 

We collected Vermont and Delaware license plates. At the beginning we said it would be all right if we only got the 48 continental states. Since we had all but the Dakotas and Rhode Island, but got Alaska and Hawaii, we decided the Dakotas could be the outliers. That left us with the task of finding Rhode Island, and Justin was especially dedicated. We sped up, we slowed down, we looked for that license plate, to no avail.

We were so tired today and just wanted to get pizza and crash at the hotel to celebrate our long trip being done. We pulled up to the hotel and Justin was walking towards it when he stopped and motioned me over. A Rhode Island license plate!! Our quest is complete!

I don't know if Philadelphia will be our forever home, but this will be a fun adventure for at least a few years. Lots to learn, so much to see. So many towns here have signs that they were established pre-1800. I'm loving it!! Can't wait to go downtown and see Independence Hall. And Baltimore, and Boston, and just, everything. 

No comments:

Post a Comment