4-25-17  on the road again----

Time for our 10+ hour trip back to Atlanta!  Managed to get loaded up and out of the house by about 9 am.  It was another nice day for a long ride.
First---a view of our house---minus the huge tree that use to be where the mulch is!  I didn't even notice the tree was gone until the 2nd or 3rd day we were there!    It was nice seeing my azalea and rhodie blooming.  Missed the lilacs this year. :(  There were even a few irises blooming by the time we left.

 Illinois farmlands

loved seeing the fields of wild flowers.

 lots of yellow fields in Illinois along I-64!

 Shortly after we got onto I-57, WAYS told us to get off the highway and detour on highway 37.  So we did----only to run into construction work on 37!

 But I did get a kick out of driving through the huge city of Bonnie, Illinois!  I spent a lot of time in this town with 2 business buildings back in the late 60's/early 70's.  Shortly after we moved from West Frankfort to St. Louis, my brother's best friend and his sister who was my best friend moved here.  So he and I spent many weekends here with them.  Use to love walking to the quarry pond and swimming.  No way would I swim there now!

 New old barns to photograph.

 Back on I-57 near the I-24 intersection----more construction.  Gotta love driving through Illinois!

 More weird things on the interstates---space ship? :)

 Finally leaving Illinois---heading into Paducah, Kentucky.

 Kentucky farmland.

 another cool old barn

 somewhere in Tennessee, I think.

 getting into the foot hills of Tennessee.

 Angie prefers to drive right through Nashville.  Whenever Ken and I try that, we usually get caught up in really bad traffic.  But it was cruising today.

 East of Nashville

more wild flowers

 more foothills.

 coming down the mountain.  Looks like this run-away ramp was used fairly recently!  Glad it wasn't while we were around.

 back to the Tennessee river near Chattanooga.

 impromptu waterfall along the side of the road.

 another cool building with a view.

 another view of the wild flowers by Chattanooga.

 Good old Chattanooga traffic.

 Once we got into Georgia, WAYS made it look like it would be a little quicker to cut through the countryside.  More fields of yellow!

 I remember seeing these when Ken and I were cutting through the countryside from Chattanooga a couple weeks ago.

 loved seeing the farmlands and farm animals.

 and different barns.

Turned out to be not such a good idea to go this route.  More road construction!!!  We had to wait quite awhile to get through some areas where the road was down to 1 lane and they were directing 10 vehicles or so at a time through a couple miles at a time.  Probably would have been quicker to go through the mess which is now 285 and 85, but I still think the views are better this way.
It was a jam packed 6 days (2 spent on the road).  But I enjoyed having the mother/daughter time.  I'm hoping they get their baby soon, but I'll miss these mother/daughter trips!