Day 30 - Tuesday, Oct 2 - Gadsden, AL to Hagerstown, MD

Starting mileage:  7561  Starting time: 7:30 am
Ending mileage: 8239 Ending time: 5:00 pm
Travel mileage:  678 Travel time: 9:30 hours (lost another hour due to time change)

 Soon after leaving Gadsden, the terrain changed significantly, becoming hilly and mountainous as we entered the Appalachian mountains and the area around Smokey Mtn National Park.

 It didn't rain all day but we did have precipitation that varied from misting to torrential downpours where we could barely see the road. It was pretty stressful driving in the pouring rain. At one point in the late afternoon we saw a rainbow.

 Many of the trees had bare or nearly bare limbs but we don't know why. It looked like it was from some insects that had chewed the leaves off.
Day 30 map
Smokey Mountains

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 11 - Thursday, Sept 13 - Klamath Falls, OR to Lassen NP to San Jose, CA

Image
Starting mileage:  3525 Starting time: 8:00 am Ending mileage: 4010 Ending time: 7:00 pm Travel mileage:  485 Travel time: 11:00 hours The weather lady on the local TV station said that the temperature in Klamath Falls was 33 degrees this morning and there is a freeze warning for tonight! On the way down to Lassen NP, we saw a billboard complaining about water availability and read an article about farmers in the Klamath Basin suing a judge over a ruling to reduce withdrawing irrigation water from a river in order to protect salmon in a river. Apparently the salmon population in the river is threatened by not enough water and the drought is exacerbating the problem. The signs of forest fires new and old are ever-present. The sky was very hazy due to major fires to the west although fortunately there were no road closures. We went through one area that must have had a fire very recently as there were still piles of white and black ash on the hillsides along the road. There were
Read more

Day 14 - Sunday, Sept 16 - San Luis Obispo to Long Beach and Catalina Island

Image
Starting mileage:  4291 Starting time: 11:30 pm Ending mileage: 4500 Ending time: 3:30 pm Travel mileage:  209 Travel time: 4:00 hours After breakfast, there was a strong smell of smoke and when I went outside, it was very smoky down the street and to the mountains to the east. Sitting outside, small particles of ash would come down. Apparently a small brush fire started this morning and it was put out within a few hours. We went to St. Stephen's Episcopal Church with Eric and Kathy this morning and enjoyed the service. The sermon was very good relating to the 2nd lesson from James which was about how speech can be like fire - a small thing can spread and be very dangerous. It was significantly relating to the current political state of affairs. While the "off-peak" time to get to the ferry launch is 3 hours, 15 minutes, when we left, Google Maps was predicting a little over 4 hours which left us with zero leeway to meet the ferry. Traffic was terrible but expecte
Read more

Day 18 - Thursday, Sept 20 - In San Diego

Image
Thursday was largely a work day. Anna headed off to her office, Amy is working from home, I did IBM work and Carmen was doing laundry. In the afternoon, we took some time off and Amy took me to the zoo while Carmen stayed here to read her book "Pachinko". I hadn't been to the San Diego zoo for over 20 years when the girls were small. The zoo is huge with large natural-looking habitats for many of the large animals. The zoo has been very involved with protecting and propagating endangered species. For dinner we went to a Mongolian "hot-pot" restaurant where you cook your own food by putting meat, seafood, vegetables and noodles in a large pot of boiling broth. Amy & Anna's apartment in San Diego Low-land gorilla Panda Dinner at Mongolian "Hot-Pot" restaurant
Read more