Day one: drive from Fayetteville to Clark County, AR. ---- mostly on back roads, through small communities and national forest.
Along the western edge of Arkansas I was delighted to see a field of Indian paintbrush and coreopsis .....looking something like this...
The woods here, south of Fort Smith, were laced with white dogwoods and wild pink phlox grew in the ditches near the hardwood forests.
Later there were more tall pines, logging trucks and areas both of clear cutting and replanted pines. Lumber, southern white pine is a big industry in Clark County....there is a Georgia Pacific plant there..
Farm fields, pastures were covered in yellow buttercups.
Five hours later, I reached my brother's farm....where cattle grazed in a field of buttercups as the late afternoon sun made everything even more golden!
My sister in law has a real country garden....lots of repurposed and cluttery cute containers...here is a bed of iris which came from my mom's house in Little Rock.
I really enjoyed spending time with them while waiting for the storms in Tennessee and Georgia to subside.
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Day 2. Today Gurdon, AR to Franklin, TN, just south of Nashville.
Overcast and cloudy until just after Jackson, TN. Very rural. Lots of trucks for hours on I-40!
As I approached Exit 172, the sign of up-coming attractions in Dickson said "Sewing Super Store", did I imagine that?.....I took the Exit....LOL! Sure enough, more signage reassured me..."Sewing Super Store" 3.8 mi. Turn right.
I did...drove and drove...4 lanes wide, hard to watch both sides....I pulled over. That is when I spotted the WALMART.....hmmmm. Have to say, I am not a fan of theirs....BUT when I am on a road trip in strange (to me) areas, I know I will find a good place to walk and feel OK when I enter...so I did. I did notice a sign of a business hidden by the way it was down the hill ....for a vacuum cleaner shop with FABRIC! But I went on in to Walmart...
[Had I gone to the vacuum store, it would have been the sewing super store I was trying to find.just Googled it here on the IPad... I guess I will be stopping there on my way home....I'm sure I will need a break! ]
Then, after 6 hours of driving, and 40 minutes of cruising Walmart on foot, i took my goodies to the car and drove until the next exit and turned onto the newly opened 840 which by-passes Nashville.
Peaceful! Blue skies, rolling hills, trees again laced with dogwood.....very little traffic.
A wonderful change after hours of sharing the road with semi trucks and drivers in a hurry!
From I-840 I took the first exit for Franklin, a slow, meandering two lane with moderate traffic.
Suddenly, a deer bounded out from trees along the opposite side of the road and into the front of the car ahead of me! The car struck the deer, which slid under the moving car....and came to rest, quivering in front of my car. Scary and sad....!
It was surreal, in the "late afternoon, going home for the day" traffic....We all kept moving, swerving around the poor deer....I don't know if the car that hit it sustained any damage....I was intent on locating my motel and getting out from behind the wheel!
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Off to curl up with the magazine now!
