The trip to Maryland
Just a few observations on our trip from Arizona to Maryland.
The landscape on the way home was different from on the way out. We drove on I-10 from Arizona to Texas. From Green Valley until where I-20 splits off from I-10 in Texas, quite a ways inside west Texas, the landscape is similar to that in Arizona--desert and mountains--even if not quite as spectacular as in Arizona. From there, roughly from Pecos to Abilene, the landscape if flat, but not without interest--scrub, distant mesas and buttes.
The Permian Basin, what is known as the oil patch, around Odessa/Midland, has many oil wells, the small ones with pumps that look like those toy birds that dip their beaks into glasses of liquid. The roadsides are as industrial and grim as any I have seen anywhere.
East of Abilene, the countryside is rolling green, with trees. After Dallas the landscape becomes increasingly lush, with rivers, hills and many trees. It begins to look midwestern. Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are heavily treed so that driving the interstates is like driving in a tree tunnel with little to see. Some hills and higher country appears occasionally. What strikes one is the difference from the west, where you see the bones of the mountains rather than the relatively softer, homogenizing covering of trees.
We enjoyed the Mississippi crossing at Vicksburg, touring around the bluffs and old homes of this old town.
We turned northeast at Atlanta for a stretch of highways we have travelled ofter between there and Solomons.
We didn't see many dogwoods until we got near Atlanta. But Atlanta was quite beautiful with its azaleas and dogwoods. Solomons and our area is also in its spring finery, and we are enjoying it: the azaleas are startling in their rich, intense colors and the dogwoods, particularly those in the woods at the sides of the roads, look particularly Japanese with their rafts of white floating horizontally under the leafing-out trees. The occasional pink dogwood seems almost gaudy but maintains a certain dignity as well--rare, beautiful, still and demure.
The landscape on the way home was different from on the way out. We drove on I-10 from Arizona to Texas. From Green Valley until where I-20 splits off from I-10 in Texas, quite a ways inside west Texas, the landscape is similar to that in Arizona--desert and mountains--even if not quite as spectacular as in Arizona. From there, roughly from Pecos to Abilene, the landscape if flat, but not without interest--scrub, distant mesas and buttes.
The Permian Basin, what is known as the oil patch, around Odessa/Midland, has many oil wells, the small ones with pumps that look like those toy birds that dip their beaks into glasses of liquid. The roadsides are as industrial and grim as any I have seen anywhere.
East of Abilene, the countryside is rolling green, with trees. After Dallas the landscape becomes increasingly lush, with rivers, hills and many trees. It begins to look midwestern. Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are heavily treed so that driving the interstates is like driving in a tree tunnel with little to see. Some hills and higher country appears occasionally. What strikes one is the difference from the west, where you see the bones of the mountains rather than the relatively softer, homogenizing covering of trees.
We enjoyed the Mississippi crossing at Vicksburg, touring around the bluffs and old homes of this old town.
We turned northeast at Atlanta for a stretch of highways we have travelled ofter between there and Solomons.
We didn't see many dogwoods until we got near Atlanta. But Atlanta was quite beautiful with its azaleas and dogwoods. Solomons and our area is also in its spring finery, and we are enjoying it: the azaleas are startling in their rich, intense colors and the dogwoods, particularly those in the woods at the sides of the roads, look particularly Japanese with their rafts of white floating horizontally under the leafing-out trees. The occasional pink dogwood seems almost gaudy but maintains a certain dignity as well--rare, beautiful, still and demure.
posted by arthurandjane at 7:42 AM
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