Tennesee and Georgia Highways

    Much of our drive through the southern edge of the Appalachian mountains today was beautiful.  Lots of small, rushing streams and mini-waterfalls spilling out of the cracks in the rock walls on both sides of the freeway.  Flowering bushes and trees showed pink and white between the dark trunks of Georgia pinetrees.   The starting point of th Appalachian hiking trail is in Georgia.  Many folks who set out to hike the 2180 miles of the trail begin in early spring so that they can get to the northern end in Maine before the snow flies in late fall.

    But we didn't have much time to enjoy these amazing views.  The traffic was just horrible.  Sometimes there were as many big trucks on the road as cars.  In the mountains the trucks labored up the steep inclines on a freeway too narrow to have a lane for slow moving vehicles.  On the steep runs down the hill the trucks tailgated more cautious drivers as they barreled down to the valleys.  It was disconcerting to see that the runaway truck ramps were on the left side so out of control trucks would have to clear several lanes of traffic before getting to the safety ramps.

    Finally we were in Georgia, out of the mountains, and onto a freeway that was 10 lanes wide, all of them full of traffic as though it was rush hour.  Just solid traffic from Chattanooga, through Atlanta, and most of the way to Macon.

     Terry and Connie planned to meet us at a hotel in Macon.  When we got there we looked around the lot for a Minnesota car and found that they had arrived just a few minutes before we did!  Today is Connie's birthday so we walked to a nearby steakhouse for drinks and a great steak.

     The temps went over 80 today and we could see daffodils blooming on the hillsides.  Time for me to put on my summer clothes.  Tomorrow we get to the low country along the southern coast.