March 29

Made it to Knoxville, TN by midnight. Mind you, we changed time zones twice since Thursday, so it didn't feel like midnight. The landscape got hillier, and not so much with wildflowers along the road but flowering trees. Lots of redbuds yesterday and today, forsythias, and white flowering trees - pears? Too tall to be apples. The crows are crows again, not ravens, there are flocks of starlings, we still see turkey vultures everywhere but that's about it. As we drive further north we're going "back in time" with regards to spring... we're in Maryland now where the grass is green but the trees are still bare. *Sigh*.
From route 40 we changed to rte 81 north of Knoxville, and spent the day mostly in Virginia. Now a tiny piece of Maryland and a corner of West Virginia and then we'll be in Pennsylvania. More trucks, more cars, more exits, more poor drivers, more towns, more houses between with fields and cows and corn stubble. Ah, it's great to be almost home!