Late March?

Tennessee
Back roads…did I say, twisty, turny, narrow back roads? Through the back woods and small towns, some rather dilapidated. So, of course, I just had to find Dueling Banjos from Deliverance to play off my phone. I thought Clare was going right into the ditch! Of course, the ditch was only inches from the tires- the roads were amazingly narrow with no shoulder to speak of- just straight to the deep ditch. We did manage to stay on the road.
We frequently seem to be going “cross-grain” to the way the majority of roads go, and we avoid interstates as much as possible, so sometimes our road choices are a bit sketchy.

Cumberland Gap
What a fascinating place! This is where settlers passed through to get from the east of the Appalachian Mtns. to the west. Daniel Boone blazed the trail in 1775. Settlers from as far north as Pennsylvania would travel south until they got near here and then travel across the mountains through this gap to what is now Kentucky. The tiny town of Cumberland Gap is in an ancient meteorite crater!
And in a serendipitous way, our next stops are at Levi Jackson State Park – an early settler and trader, and Fort Boonesborough where Boone, his family and others from his party settled.
The Wilderness Trail and Boone Trace are actually parts of the roads and highways here, as well as hiking trails. It is interesting to think about what the settlers saw and experienced when they first traveled these lands.