Ride The Country

We left home on May 25th, as I write this it is June 25th, one calendar month later. We traveled down the interior of the Eastern seaboard states slowly going west. In Tennessee we went across the state going west until we dived south and headed into a western corner of Georgia, into Alabama, Missouri, and then, Louisiana.

Having traveled already to Pennsylvania (3 times last year alone) and both Virginia and West Virginia the trip didn’t really get “new” until Tennessee.  By then we were getting a travel rhythm going. Instead of taking 3 hours to pack up the RV and head out to the next campground, it was taking only 2. Now, we get it done in 1 to 1 1/2 hours. And pack up to go timing is so important. Extra travel time leaves opportunity to conserve gas by driving a little slower. And that also makes the ride more interesting. We have a Garmin RV GPS that takes out the worry of low bridges and such, so when it plots us on a US Route rather than an interstate, we get where we are going just as fast and the view is so much more informative of what that part of the country is like.

After we left Louisiana, we drove through the Bayou and even though it was an Interstate I cannot recall being on an elevated road where the tree tops on both sides were just 30 feet higher than the road, while the water was just 20 feet below. And it went on for miles. A lot of miles. We were still in bayou country when we got to Texas, but the landscape had changed. There was still areas of lowland water, but there was also ranches and cows with lots of land. And I looked around as we drove down a 75 MPH road at 65 MPH and it looked like Texas. I thought back on how we started in the hills of New England, and across the farmlands in Pennsylvania, the beautiful mountain roads and countryside in West Virginia. We moved on into Virginia and the land flattened out some, but the hillsides along the highways always looked so damn pretty. When we got into the real south of Alabama and Missouri, it almost looked like New England, or at least like Western MA in August. Everything was so green. But when you walk around, it’s the ground itself that looks so different, with clay everywhere.

As much as seeing cities of fame around the country, our trip is about seeing and feeling the country, not as tourists but as visitors. Sure, I have at times walked around with a camera hung around my neck, but mostly I use my phone camera. And sometimes we act as dumbfounded about where to go and what to do as any tourist we see scratching their heads while looking at a map in our hometown of Salem, MA. I suppose it’s a karmic energy thing that since we help visitors to Salem we are treated like visiting guests everywhere we go.

Our journey and adventure continues, some days we go and seek magic, some days we sit back and let the magic seek us. It’s there every day some how some less and some more than others.  So until the next blog: