5/31/12 – It was a dark and dreary day in St. Louis this morning. It was sprinkling rain and overcast when we left at 8:15, 61 degrees. But it promised to improve as we moved eastward, and it did. We pointed the car toward Knoxville, TN for a long day of driving.

Almost immediately, we drove through the city of St. Louis and I took a few photos of the arch, though they are less than spectacular, given the weather and that I took them from a moving car. We chose not to stop, since we had both climbed to the top of that arch on previous visits to the city.

And we crossed the muddy Mississippi River on the Martin Luther King, Jr. bridge. The river was bustling with activity, as it was in Louisiana when we crossed it going west 2 weeks ago. And that put us into Illinois. And the land got very flat once again. And we saw more farm country…fields of grain, fields of corn and fields of brown dirt, waiting for the next planting. And the countryside was sprinkled with farmhouses sitting in the middle of fields, surrounded by red barns and aluminum silos and rows of trees dividing properties and surrounding homes, providing protection from the sun and the elements.

And we saw grain mills, where the crops from the fields become food for the table…huge structures of what appears to be cement…clusters of tall silos beside tall square buildings surrounded by grain elevators and machinery. And they all looked similar…like they were desperately in need of a good coat of paint.

At 11 AM we crossed over the Ohio River and into Kentucky. And the Ohio, another working river, seemed cleaner and not so muddy as the mighty Mississippi. We drove on through areas of thick trees along the road, hiding whatever was behind them from our view…a road, a farm, a field, more trees. Maybe even a golf course? And the further east we went, the more the land flowed up and down over the hills, and sometimes the road went through them, exposing bronze, raggedy rock walls and ledges created by the blasts of TNT that made passage possible. And the grass beside the road sometimes had a rusty layer floating on top of it…making that transformation from grass to seed and hay.

At 1:00 PM we were in Tennessee. And I began to sing "greenest state in the land of the free". (Who remembers where that came from?) And it certainly was green, though I would challenge the phrase. And I began to be frustrated with the traffic. The big trucks had taken over the roads and there were more of them than cars, it seemed. And the drivers played loose with the rules of the road…driving in the left lane, not using the truck lanes to climb hills, and literally blocking the road by driving side-by-side, not allowing faster traffic to pass. It slowed us down. I miss the trains, for they would definitely reduce the number of semi's on the road. And that would be a good thing.

And the further east we drove, the higher the hills became, as we sensed the ever-changing elevations…a hint of things to come. And Steve pointed out every billboard that advertised a winery.

We arrived in Knoxville at 4:30 CDT, 5:30 EDT. We were back in our own time zone again.

I have included a photo of the barricade that we built tonight, similar to other nights, to protect Beamer from his misadventures and prevent him from getting to the door. Notice who is peeking over the wall of stuff.