Cross country trek in a Greyhound bus of a car

Sharon and I have just completed a four day, three night drive from Columbia, S.C. to back home here in Payson, Ariz. The reason for the trip was to pick up an automobile left to Sharon by her recently deceased mother.

There were assorted personal items to bring over, also, so the car was pretty well loaded.  It’s a 1998 Buick Custom LeSabre, a big heavy car which rides like a Greyhound bus. The seats are like those found in expensive hotel lobbies, and the sound system is better than the one we have at home.

It’s truly a luxury ride, the kind we complain about when we blame Detroit for all our energy problems. Well. Guess what? This car averaged almost 30 miles per gallon of regular gasoline and ran like a sewing machine! It allowed for a reasonably enjoyable long drive across the country. Here are some of the details:

We drove first to Atlanta, where we still have some things in storage from the time we lived there. We managed to retrieve some treasured items, then move the remaining trove to a smaller unit, thus saving us a considerable amount of money. It was close to 3:00 in the afternoon when we finally finished our work and pulled out to begin our journey.

It began to rain, not heavily, but steadily. The 5:00 Atlanta rush hour which begins around three-thirty was just beginning to form. Traffic on I-285, the perimeter highway around Atlanta, was already bumper to bumper, and the rain wasn’t helping.

Finally, we made our way over to Interstate 75 and turned north. The only noticeable difference was that in some places the road was six lanes wide. Every lane was bumper to bumper. This continued for almost the next 45 minutes as, slowly, commuters dropped off when they reached their suburbs.

The road narrowed from six lanes to five, then four, and eventually the two which led to Chattanooga, our destination for that evening. We made it as far as Ringold, Ga., which is within the shadow of Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, home of Rock City and Ruby Falls.

We decided not to test the Chattanooga rush hour.

Ringold is a town right out of The True Southerner’s Handbook. Everyone speaks with a high heavy nasal accent, almost a sing-song, and ends every sentence with a question mark even when there is no question, the last word being about an octave above the one just before. “The room rate is $55 dollars per nite?.” (night) “There’s a nice restaurant “bout two blocks over yonder?” “Y’all want a non-smoking room?”

The young female clerk was absolutely beautiful, with flawless skin and Revelon hair. She was probably around 19 or 20 with a nice little diamond ring on her left hand. She probably weighed around two-fifty. Everyone we encountered was unflinchingly polite and wore a sincere smile.

The next morning, we got around Chattanooga without incident and headed out on Highway 64, which bisects Tennessee, heading toward Memphis. Everywhere we saw evidence of floods and tornadoes. Most of eastern Tennessee has recently suffered some of the worst storms in its history - even flooding The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. Streams were still swollen and farm land dotted with large puddles. Farmers who had not already gathered their spring corn lost their entire crops. Tractors could not maneuver in the muddy fields.

The most noticeable features in eastern Tennessee are the dramatic changes in elevation and the absolutely lush, dense foliage. The same can be said for much of the South down the Appalachian Mountains, but for some reason eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina are the epitome. A wet spring contributes to the dense growths of trees, large and small, and bushes, especially thick Rhododendrons bursting with rainbows of color, looking like fancy ball gowns. White, lacy Dogwoods peek out here and there from the myriad shades of green. The ancient gray rock forms a perfect border or background.

The Appalachians are among the world’s oldest mountains, and were once almost as high as Everest is today, according to geologists. Two enormous continents pushed against each other (North America and Africa) and left a huge wrinkle down the southeastern and northeastern portions of North America, forming The Appalachians and The Blue Ridge. Even the Catskills and Pocono’s in New York and Pennsylvania may have been formed in a similar way and have eroded and settled ever since. However it all happened,
some of the world’s most beautiful and interesting landscape resides in the eastern U.S.

It comes with a price, however. High humidity, even in the mountains, and swarms of bugs of every description are currency of the realm. These things vary, of course, but only to a degree when they are adapted to local situations.

The next few days will be filled with stark geological changes and regional differences of lifestyles as we finally join Interstate 40 for the rest of our trip. On through Memphis, Little Rock, Oklahoma City, Amarillo and Albuquerque before reaching Arizona at Holbrook, where we turn south down to the Mogollon Rim and our beloved Payson.

More later...