Peter & Avery leave Charlotte

OK. My brother, Brian, asked if I intended to blog about my cross-country driving trip with Avery. I think that's a good idea since I had such a good time driving with my daughter, Gillian, across the northern part of the US and Canada 3 years ago. Avery is moving to Seattle to seek his destiny in game-design, having just completed his degree at SCAD. Here goes...

Day uno: we left Charlotte at 6:15am with the intention of driving a marathon to make it to Van Buren, Arkansas - nowhere to speak of, just half way to Santa Fe. Along with Avery’s abbreviated possessions stuffed into his little red Civic coupe we packed a cooler with 2 days rations so we wouldn’t have to take time finding acceptable food, and certainly wanted to avoid drive-in semi-food.

Driving along I-40 through the North Carolina and Tennessee mountains we encountered consecutive rain storms all day, all the way to western Arkansas. As chance would have it the first day of my trip with Gillian, 3 years ago, was completely consumed with rainstorms as we drove across southern Ontario and Quebec Provinces. Very appropriate parallel…

On the first day with Avery we had 2 stops to make, one fruitful and the other not. The first stop was in Lebanon, Tn, to drop in on my old high school friend Anthony Tart. Alas, he was away on vacation. I hadn't notified him (I hate to commit - prefer to leave things open-ended) so he wasn't expecting us. I scribbled a note the receptionist assured me he would receive. Did he get it? Let me know AT.

Next stop was in Nashville at Joe Glaser's instrument repair business to drop off a new Lowden acoustic that was giving me some tonal problems on the low "e" string. I had contacted George Lowden in Ireland and he said if the problem could be discerned Joe was the guy to do it. Luckily I was driving by within a mile or so of his shop and had planned to drop the guitar off. I felt very odd just handing the instrument to a guy I'd never met, 7 hours from home but I discussed my needs, handed it over, got in the car and drove toward Arkansas. More rain followed but there was intermittent calm, at least enough for us to notice changes in landscape. 


Eastern Tennessee is very much like western NC - very lush, rolling hills and mountains. In western Tennessee, toward Memphis the mountains turn to pleasant rolling farmland with occasional low mountains. However, upon passing around hilly Memphis we crossed the Mississippi River at the Arkansas border and discovered that the Great Mississippi divided two very different landscapes. In Arkansas the land turned immediately to flat, expansive delta with large expanses of fields, the scale of which dwarfs those we're used to near Charlotte. The character of landscape eventually changed to hilly, smaller farmland and eventually to mountainous Ozarks as we approached the Oklahoma/Arkansas border. Arriving late we didn't have time to explore the town, and were told by the receptionist at the hotel that there wasn't much to see, that most every historic building had been replaced with newer, characterless structures. We turned in early in anticipation of an early morning departure to cross Oklahoma, Texas, and on into New Mexico. No pictures yet because these are distance days. More tomorrow.....