3-12-2018  Knoxville - St. Louis in a snow storm:

Our weekend of pet sitting went quickly.  In addition to a trip up to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, we also went to a movie and ate at a couple of our favorite places in West Knoxville.  We even got to visit with the kids 2 nights.

When Monday rolled around, Tim headed off to work and Ken, Faith, and myself headed off to St. Louis.  Faith's step mom had cancer surgery and Faith wanted to go and help Brenda and her Dad for the 5 nights we were there.  I'm sure Brenda appreciated it!  We sure do have special daughter and son -in-laws!

On to our 8 hour drive to St. Louis----another first for us---snow in the East Tennessee mountains!

 It was almost a white out with as hard as it snowed.

a different view of the old barns along the way---first time I got some with snow on them.

 Fortunately the roads weren't bad

 It was actually quite pretty---although I was looking forward to seeing the spring flowering trees along the way. 

 It's rather weird driving to St. Louis this time of year.  Spring is arriving in Georgia, and the farther West we go, winter comes back. 

 It pretty much snowed for about 100 miles---just this side of Nashville (although Nashville actually had some snow on the ground, too).

 more farmland

 Then the sun came out and it was even prettier.

 some of the color in the budding trees even showed through.

 closer to Nashville we got the less snow we saw

 until we hit some more higher elevations.

 Past Nashville was pretty sunny

 one of my favorite barns along the way

 one we don't see when the trees are leafed out

 this looks like it was an old farmhouse.

 very little of a barn left here

 the old YellaWood advertising barn is showing it's age.

 When we got to the Tennessee and Ohio rivers, we noticed how flooded they were.  All of this should be land.

 another view of the Tennessee

 and the Ohio

Made it into St. Louis about 3 pm.  Dropped Faith off at her Dad and Brenda's and visited for awhile.  Then it was time to head "home" and see what surprises we might find.  This time we had a broken window in the back.  So Ken managed to get the window out and replace it while we were there.  Also found the Escape had a dead battery.  Fortunately Ken was able to charge it overnight and it was good to go the rest of the time we were there.  Headed to Pirrone's for our St. Louis style pizza that night.  Do miss a lot of our restaurants here!