Finally the Appalachian Mountains of home

 Suzanne finally was tired enough to let me drive through the turns around Knoxville, where I once lived. She took over again for the last leg through the mountains to Asheville.

 I've always loved seeing the Smokies as you go east.

 The first highway sign saying Asheville is just 59 miles ahead. Heck, we've got several thousand miles under our belts (seat belts) by now...this is a breeze.

 Welcome to Haywood County (NC!)

And coming home, we only took a few minutes unloading my stuff into my car, which had been parked at Suzanne's for the whole time.  It turns out that wasn't a great idea, because some rodent moved in and tried to set up housekeeping in my heater, and left a big pile of cotton and a terrible smell.  Fortunately the animal didn't end up being found when the mechanic pulled out all the nesting materials, and the air blows freely and without scent through the system now.

I've been home the rest of the month of October, and slipped right back into my old habits pretty easily. But I've also had all these photos to post here.  No more. They are all out in the web now. And I'm going to be posting more local photos over on Alchemy of Clay (just because there were so many of these from the trip!)

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.