East Bound!

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Wow! It sure has been a while since I've written one of these! I know, I know....I'm a procrastinator! Ha ha! I have been just loading the photos to Facebook and skimping on the photo blog. :/ I do plan on updating all of our trips, they just won't be in order! 😊

For now...the mother of all road trips...moving East! Many of you will already know that we have moved from Arizona to Virginia. We took 4 days to do the drive....stopping along the way to have short visits with some old friends. My only regret is that I never did get my road trip playlist finished, so we had crappy music. :/ I somehow managed to stay awake during the whole drive too! Towing the car seemed to help with my motion sickness so I did not need to take any Dramamine for the entire journey. We passed through 8 states in 4 days! Whew! We both had been to many of the states before, and, truth be told, there is not a lot to see off the highway, so my pictures are sparse. New Mexico and (most of) Texas is barren and flat. East Texas starts to get really green and tree-filled and leads into Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Virginia, which are all chock full of green trees of varying densities and height. Mississippi has super tall trees...Alabama is more dense....Virginia has super dense tangles of various deciduous trees that line the road and block your view. Louisiana's trees are dense, but there is more lakes/swamps/rivers and open space there.

Along the way we stopped to visit a friend in NM, another in TX, and one more in LA. We drove right through West Monroe, LA, so of course we had to stop at the Duck Commander warehouse! It was so busy! Huge line just to get into the visitor center and gift shop. We had the dogs in the truck, so we just snapped a few photos and left. We got into Chattanooga, TN just after dark in the 3rd day, which I regret. From what I could see, it looked like it would have been a gorgeous sight! Right on the edge of the Smoky Mountains, the flat land suddenly turns to steep hill and precipices of rock and trees that nestle into the highway. We started seeing it in the fading light, and it was completely dark by the time we got to Chattanooga. 😞 We will definitely have to make a return visit! We also drove right past Pigeon Forge, home of Dollywood, the home/birthplace of Davy Crockett, and the Great Smoky Mountain National Park entrance, which are all places we hope to go back to visit when we don't have 3 dogs in tow! It was a long journey, but we got to see some of our amazing country that we have never seen before, and for that, it was worth it! (And J got to see Texas Motor Speedway and Bristol!)



Note: As of writing this, the video function is not working. I have a video crossing the Mississippi into Mississippi over a cool bridge, but you'll just have to wait to see it...or find it on my Facebook! 😊 Also, the welcome to TX sign was in the middle of a podunk town...literally, one side of the RR tracks was NM and the other was TX. I was unprepared to snap that shot. Then it was dark getting into LA and TN so I didn't get good shots of those welcome signs either. :/

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Photos

Alabama!
Mississippi came first, but that was in a video!