The land we crossed

We traveled the first part of our journey on very nice non-interstate highways!

 Raton and Clayton CO - 1/2 mile ahead...getting on a different road.

 Capulin Volcano National Monument.  We'd never heard of it either! It's in New Mexico...and due to rain damage the road to it's top is closed. I noticed a familiar road number, US 64 (which goes east/west near home in NC.)

We jumped on and off interstates the first 2 days, then went east the rest of the way on I-40, which I can see from my apartment back home!

 Des Moines and Clayton ahead...which state?  Still New Mexico, just before going into Texas.

Suzanne brought a bit of sage back from New Mexico, where she visited friends, or maybe CO where she visited her sister/daughter, can't remember who.

A train headed west while we went east.

 And back onto an interstate in Amarillo TX.

We stayed in the same motel in Clinton OK which we'd stayed in on our way west 15 days before.

 Early on Oct 8 we drove through Oklahoma City, OK.

 What was that ahead?

 Just one of the interesting sculptures that decorate the cross streets.

We went the Ft. Smith direction...

 This may be my only photo in Arkansas, as we approached the Mississippi crossing over into Tennessee at Memphis!

 The tugboat reminded me of my growing up in St. Louis MO, seeing the same river boats chugging along.

 And there's that weird pyramid building again. Wikipedia says:
The Memphis Pyramid, initially known as the Great American Pyramid, formerly referred to as the Pyramid Arena and locally referred to as The Pyramid,^[5] was originally built as a 20,142-seat arena located in downtown Memphis. The Memphis Pyramid has not been regularly used as a sports or entertainment venue since 2004. In 2015, the Pyramid re-opened as a Bass Pro Shops"megastore", which includes shopping, a hotel, restaurants, a bowling alley, and an archery range, with an outdoor observation deck adjacent to its apex.

We were happy to get to the east side of town to find a motel, thus avoiding morning rush hour traffic.  However there was a lot of evening home-going traffic slowing us down as we drove east of the city into the suburbs.

 Nashville was just a blip on the road as we stretched through the length of Tennessee.

Look, someone built a pyramid shaped roof there! But the bigger cone had more than 4 sides. What does the sign say? I think "Adventure - Science..."  We were on our last leg, heading for our old familiar mountains by that evening.  So I'll save those last shots for another post.