The Journey: Day TWO and THREE

After spending two lovely nights in Coldwater, Michigan with our friends Julie and Mike, we knew we had to hit the road again further east and south. I have a sweet cousin and family who live in Savannah Georgia. They had asked us to come and visit them and I had always wanted to go there, so we included them in this trip south. I will post about that in my next Journey entry. To get there, we headed through Ohio. Here is the map of our Day two journey: (Just hit the minus sign a few times and you will see the route):


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No offense to anyone from Ohio, but there was no excitement on that part of the trip. Just a lot of flat farm type land. We did see some deer and a few wild turkeys on the trip, but we were in our car and going by too fast to catch a snapshot of them. (Can't you see me, pulling over on the interstate snapping photos of cows, deer and wild turkeys?) Of course, the bloggers going by would COMPLETELY understand!) ha

On day three, we knew we would be heading into more mountainous countryside and headed thru Virginia and West Virginia. This part of the trip I was waiting for, because I have never been in any type of mountains. I know one of my Kentucky readers thought the Appalchian Mountains weren't "really" mountains, but to me, I was thrilled to drive through them. I was not disappointed.

Here is the Day THREE map of our journey: (Again, click the minus (-) sign a few times to get a better idea of the route):


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You can see on the above terrain map that we were heading for some nice scenery.
But we weren't the normal travelers.
Oh. No.
Because we were pretty sick of just being on interstate highways, we told our TOMTOM GPS "no tollways" and "no interstates". Boy, we had an adventure! We actually ended up on tiny 2-way roads that hair-pinned and wrapped itself up and down the Appalchian mountains.
Once, we ended up in a state park road! But that was the best, because we came upon a "look out" over a spectacular gorge. We were the only ones that pulled into the road stop and hardly met any cars throughout the drive there. (I think the state park was closed for their winter season). Once, we ended up in someone's driveway that dead-ended. (What was the GPS thinking? We followed the instructions exactly!) But then we turned on a tiny county road (GET THIS: ONE LANE WIDE!) for about a mile and then hooked up with a small highway that got us out of the wilderness. I thought we would never be heard from again!
Here are some photos we took on Day THREE of our journey:


Yes, that is ME taking a picture from the car of the scenery!!

Here is one photo of just approaching the Appalchian mountains..







And these are some of a wonderful waterfall we saw along the way:





And here (my favorite!!) was the state park photos of the overlook to the gorge that I just loved. We had it all to ourselves up in the mountains!!!!












Have you ever drove UNDER and THROUGH a mountain? I hadn't!!! Here is two photos of us going through two different moutains!






The final shot I have for for you is an actual coal mine on the side of the road:



On the fourth day, we arrived in the beautiful city of Savannah, Georgia, which I will show you on my next blog post.

On the day I am writing this post, we are still in Madeira Beach Florida. The morning temperatures are still chilly, and then mid-day, it has been getting up into the low 70's. Tomorrow is supposed to be high 70's, so we hope to get to the beach for some photos.

Stay tuned for the rest of our journey...............