Today began the long (14 hours) drive back to Dallas.  We have came, seen, visited, reminisced, and now it’s time to go.  Back to the day-to-day life through which God provides us the means to take these occasional trips.  Perhaps someday in the future we will be called back to these mountains for another purpose.

(Note: these pictures were all shot from the car so forgive any blurriness.)

One last look at the mountains as we leave Chattanooga…

We drive through Georgia…

Alabama…

Mississippi…

I gotta say a couple of things about Mississippi though.  We were on I20 going through all these states from Alabama to Texas, and the condition of the road in Mississippi was horrible.  It was like riding a bumpy roller coaster.  And on top of that, I think the rudest drivers of the trip seem to hail from Mississippi.  Even in the GSMNP, almost every time someone would cut us off or do some other rude maneuver, their license plate would be from Mississippi.  Now I’m sure that not everyone from there drives like this, but from the sampling that I saw, the ratio is pretty high.  In fact, it was in Mississippi that we saw this…

Now, we didn’t see it happen so I’m not going to make any assumptions, but this was the only state where we saw anything like this the entire trip.

Louisiana…

and finally arrive at Texas.

And we end the trip, safe and sound (and tired) with a sunset through a bug-splattered windshield!

After we got to our house, I turned on the news to see stories of a tornado and severe thunderstorms that were crossing I20 where we had been just a few hours before.  But once again, God is good and brought us through all the storms to the harbor of our garage.

I hope this sharing has helped show you the beauty of the Smoky Mountains and Chattanooga, but not too much.  There are enough people there already and when it comes time for me to retire I hope there is still room.  🙂  As the great philosopher group “The Eagles” once said… “Call come place paradise, kiss it good bye.”  Here’s hoping that this part of the country has the right guards in place to prevent that from happening.

And now… back to work!