A freeway or an Interstate?

I recently spent a virtual and vicarious road trip with a friend who was taking her son to college.
They started out in the high desert of Nevada and crossed the country to Virginia.
An amazing excursion as seen through the eyes of my friend and described through a series of emails to friends and family.

I truly had forgotten, or at least shoved in the back recesses of my mind, how glorious a road trip can be. Not just the beauty of these United States buy the peculiarities of different regions and towns.

She describes traveling through Nevada wearing rose colored glasses. Wow! How true, the landscape, though barren in many places, is as beautiful as a golden sunrise when the desert is in full bloom. The mountains are unique and of different imagined shapes. The roads are sooooooo straight, my uncle used to quip:" I can read a book for ninety miles at a time and not have to look up.
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She was amazed coming out of the Great American Desert how flat the middle section of the nation is. I should have that problem, flat in the mid section!

I remember spending summers in Kansas as a child. Yuck, you say, too hot! Yeah, mebbe. But, there is something magical about waving fields of wheat, barley and oats. I could, even at a very young age, tell the different grains apart by the shape of their heads. 2
The power of combines moving from farm to farm in late August. The ground rumbled as we sat on the porch and stared at these giant machines doing the late summer mowing.

She was in awe as to how green the landscape grew as they moved east. The humidity and the undergrowth increased by each mile.
Then they reached Virginia. The old south now beckoned. After all, the capital of the Confederacy was in Virginia. A beautiful state with a heritage not to be forgotten.

I remind myself that I live almost as far south as one can get on the continental United States. Here, the flora is lush and the combines have become bush hogs mowing down the undergrowth, the overgrowth and who knows what else.
The vines are no longer Virginia creeper but the overpowering Kudzu vine that has spread across the southern terrain like a green ogre. It was introduced to the U.S. as an ornamental plant. But boy, close your windows, it will take over! Our highways and byways are overwhelmed by the stuff.

My friend comments that she expected parrots to come flying out of this morass of green.
Well, come further south, my dear, and your wish just might come true!

For many years, my husband and I have gone to a local restaurant quite frequently. Outside this establishment there is a palm tree. In the palm tree, every Spring, Quaker parrots build their nests and proceed to raise tiny Quakers. Now, understand, birds of any variety will defend their nests outrageously. As a result the restaurant was losing business to these ferocious birds. Every year more and more parrots would nest and wreak their wrath on unsuspecting patrons.
The tree was cut down. We still visit the restaurant from time to time but, I sorely miss the cacophony of those parrots!

So, as you are traveling these United States and are amazed at the richness of flora and fauna just keep in mind that freeways are in the West and interstates are in the East!