Purposes of this trip:
1. Visit several national parks including some that only a photograph of the sign is needed (because I visited the park years ago)
2. Drive along some highways through the middle of a large section of the U.S. that I had yet to drive through.

The plans for this trip were put together in just a few weeks before actually taking the trip. I noticed I had a week in October where I had nothing else scheduled. I considered several routes to different parts of the country and settled on this one. I am getting close to wrapping up all my trip goals in North America. Six more trips after this one to go!

This entire trip can be summed up in one word: RAIN! It rained all day every day except one.

OHIO: One more time I attempted to visit the Greenwood Cemetery in Zanesville. I was in the cemetery several years ago but at the time I was unable to find the graves for my Wilson ancestors there. I contacted the cemetery after returning home and got specific locations. I intended to go to this cemetery on my way home from my 2019 New England trip but was too tired of traveling at that point and skipped a number of destinations then. This time, a cemetery staff member was present. Their records, unfortunately, are rather general -- best they can say is what section and row someone is buried but not the specific lot number. Apparently the Wilson marker is one of the half dozen or so in its row that have all markings worn off. I was able to find the marker for their daughter and her family that were buried in a different section. Also, in Ohio, there is a swath of the state going south from Columbus that I had never been to before that left a big untraveled-by-Larry section. Highway 823 south from Chillicothe was a nice four-lane 70 MPH light-traffic drive.
West Virginia: I visited the New River National Park years ago but was unable to find any signs with the park name on it. I have since located the signs (and visitor centers) and went to the park to photograph the signs. I found the park signs. However, my Garmin was unable to get me to the scenic bridges. Plus, it was raining then anyway. Also, I have long wanted to visit the Blackwater Falls State Park. The trees on the mountain sides in West Virginia were at their peak fall colors. Gorgeous. Sunshine on them would have looked even better, and, allowed photographing the trees. One nice thing about West Virginia over the years is they have improved, and widened, their non-interstate highways from what they were 30-40 years ago.
VIRGINIA: This state was mostly a drive through plus spend one night there before the North Carolina Outer Banks visit. Trees in the mountains in this state were as gorgeous as they were in West Virginia.
NORTH CAROLINA: I visited Kitty Hawk's area Wright Brothers National Historic Site many years ago but did not photograph the park sign then. Nearby is the Fort Raleigh National Park site and the adjacent Elizabethan Gardens. I intended to visit all of them a few years ago but Hurricane Florence prevented it.
TENNESSEE: Earlier this year I planned to go to Gatlinburg and photograph the national park signs -- one in Tennessee and one in North Carolina. However, a flat tire in Chattanooga the day before (plus rain and fog in the next morning) kept me from completing that route. This time, a closed highway prevented me from getting to the Tennessee side although I was able to photograph the North Carolina side sign.

MISSED VISITING:
--Gatlinburg TN and the sign there for the Smoky Mountain National Park -- North Carolina closed highway 441 past the campgrounds
--Wright Brothers Memorial National Park -- although I was there just about sunrise and knew the park would be closed, I expected to at least drive into it but its gate was locked. Pictures, even with a flash, of the distant buildings, all turned out just dark blotches.
--Stones River National Battlefield Park -- in my desire to make it through St. Louis rush hour before 4:00 pm, I decided to skip this park since I knew I would again be passing through Nashville area in the near future. However, the St. Louis expectation was futile as it seems their rush hour starts at 2:00 pm or 3:00 pm so I still got caught in heavy traffic there.

OBSERVATIONS: Some observations made while traveling in this area:

1. Lancaster Ohio has some rather unusual names for their streets: Coonpath, Stringtown, Election House
2. Gate City Virginia looked like a nice place to be -- the town is on the sides of adjoining mountains
3. West Virginia sometimes calls them "Runaway Truck Ramp" and sometimes calls them "Truck Escape Ramp"
4. North Carolina had many miles of cotton fields on the sides of the highways. I grew up in western Tennessee often seeing cotton fields but really not seen any since then.
5. The houses and buildings along the Outer Banks highway are almnost all three stories tall. Guess they all want to have a view of the ocean plus stay above the water during hurricanes and tropical storms.
6. The bridges along highway 64 leading away from the North Carolina Outer Banks section have short fences along their sides. The birds stand on any one of the posts. The strange part is that they all stand at a 45 degree angle to the bridge and water. Every one of the dozens and dozens were doing this!!
7. For the first time, I saw a highway sign that said "Red Wolf Crossing". This sign was on highway 64 in North Carolina.
8. I saw over two dozen log trucks while driving along the various highways. However, all but one truck were empty.
9. North Carolina drivers do not move left one lane when some vehicle is on the shoulder. In all other states the drivers do move over.
10. Drivers throughout most of this trip tend to drive from 5 to 20 MPH over the posted speed limits. A few drivers are even going 90 to 100 MPH! While countless drivers passed me, I rarely got to pass other vehicles.
11. So few drivers use a turn signal when changing lanes. And there seems to be a new trend of getting back into my lane in barely two car lengths of space. One driver I had to honk at because he was cutting in at only half a car length in front of me. I always give ten car lengths before getting back into a lane in front of another vehicle.

The Bests:

• Fort Raleigh National Park -- mostly because I had the place to myself in early morning, just me and the many squirrels doing their thing
• Greenwood Cemetery in Zanesville OH -- unable to find the triple great Wilson grandparents' grave marker but found their daughter and her extended family
• Fall colors in the mountains of West Virginia and Virginia
• Blackwater Falls State Park -- I have intended to go to this park on a couple of previous trips. Finally made it this time. It was lightly raining, and, there were at least 100 stairs, caked with wet leaves, to climb up and down to get to the falls viewing platforms. But it was worth the sight.
• Highway 48 in West Virginia -- after leaving Blackwater Falls, I had this highway mostly to myself along with the colorful leaves on mountain sides, and the light rain
• North Carolina Outer Banks area and all the bridges across big bays of water -- I marvel at the engineering it all takes
• North Carolina Outer Banks highway 12 between Kitty Hawk and Nags Head has numerous traffic lights but they were well timed. Only had to stop at one of maybe 15 to 20 of them. :>)

The Worsts:

• Summersville WV -- a dozen timed-to-make-you-stop-at-each-of-them traffic lights extended across five miles took a long time to get through the town
• Indiana highway construction -- across the entire state on I-70 was a construction zone with only a few miles of non-construction between.
• Kentucky highway construction -- this state is one of THE WORST in the country for handing traffic with construction (along with Idaho, Indiana and Missouri)
• Missouri highway construction -- took an hour to get through one bridge work zone, and this was shortly after a half-hour traffic jam in St. Louis at 3:30 pm (which should be too soon for rush hour!!)
• Asheville NC traffic -- the town has less than 100,000 people. However, traffic jams on the interstate, during a heavy rain, added over half an hour to the expected commute. And this was in the early afternoon!!
• Smoky Mountain National Park in North Carolina -- four miles into the park on highway 441, where the campground is located, the highway was closed to continue on to Gatlinburg. I basically had to backtrack, in a heavy fog at higher elevation, the hour it took to get to the sign and campground. And I really wanted to avoid I-40 in northwest North Carolina because it is constant uphill-downhill curvy lanes with big trucks piled up all the way but my detour took me there.
• Rain, Rain, Rain -- of my six days of traveling through nine states, only one day was without rain. Of the nine states, only Missouri lacked heavy rain at some point during the day.

The Totals:

• Miles Driven: 3271
• Driving: 58 hours in 6 days (including about five hours of traffic delays due to construction or rush hour traffic)
• States: 9 -- Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky
• Pictures Taken: 150 (and deleted 30 of them)
• National Parks: 1 + 3 repeats -- New River (repeat), Wright Brothers (repeat), Fort Raleigh, Smoky Mountains (repeat)
  Note that the one first-time parks makes 216 (of 423 total) that I have visited during my lifetime. However, some I have yet to actually get into: Zion (two attempts), Big Hole (two attempts), Lassen Volcanic (two attempts), and all the way through Glacier (three attempts). Also, I still need a photo of the signs for Acadia and Rocky Mountain.

Remaining to Visit by State
• AL - DONE but would be good to drive to Dothan from Albany, Georgia then on to the Florida panhandle
• AK - DONE
• AZ - Return as long as friend Diana lives in the state, in November will visit three national parks: Tonto (second attempt), Chiricahua (second attempt) and Casa Grande Ruins to make 216 parks visited
• AR - Photograph the sign at Hot Springs National Park, also, friend Jan lives here
• CA - DONE but have yet to actually go into Lassen Volcanic National Park, and, if I ever am in Los Angeles again, would like to see Mt. Wilson Observatory, the Jet Propulsion Labs (requires pre-determined security clearance) and find my Douglass ancestors' burial place in Evergreen Cemetery in Lompoc (south of Vandenberg AFB and northwest of Santa Barbara)
• CO - DONE but need a photograph of the Smoky Mountain National Park sign, also would like to drive between Pueblo and Montrose to complete a section of the state yet to drive through
• CT - DONE
• DE - DONE
• FL - Likely visit Orlando where a high school classmate and a cousin both live, still want to take the ferry to Fort Matanzas and revisit a couple of places on the Gulf Coast: Sarasota (downtown), Pine Island (near Fort Myers) and the Naples Botanical Gardens
• GA - DONE but would like to drive from Macon to Albany then on to Dothan, Alabama to cover those parts of the state to yet drive through
• HI - DONE
• ID - DONE but would like to drive from Boise to Moscow to cover that part of the state to yet drive through
• IL - Chicago has some places yet to visit, also, maybe family history research in Danville and Pecatonica
• IN - Evansville Museum, maybe visit a friend in Plainville, and, maybe family history research in Ft.Wayne and find ancestral cemeteries in Brown county
• IA - Effigy Mounds National Park in northeast corner of the state, also maybe family history research in various parts of the state
• KS - Visit Nicodemus National Park, plus, I currently live here
• KY - Visit Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Park south of Hodgenville
• LA - DONE unless visit cousins in New Orleans
• ME - Revisit Acadia National Park to photograph the park sign and just see the park again, also visit the area around Lubec and Eastport
• MD - DONE unless to visit some national battlefields
• MA - Visit the islands Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, also, family history research plus I know many fellow Toastmasters in Boston
• MI - Visit the "thumb" part of the state at Port Austin and drive along the east coast north of the town all the way to the Mackinaw Bridge, then two national parks in Upper Penisula: Pictured Rocks and Keweenaw
• MN - Visit National Parks: Pipestone, Grand Portage, Isle Royale
• MS - DONE
• MO - DONE, but I live too close to KCMO to avoid it
• MT - DONE unless I try a fourth attempt someday to Glacier National Park to drive the Going-to-the-Sun Road
• NE - DONE
• NV - DONE
• NH - DONE
• NJ - DONE
• NM - DONE but would like to drive from Deming to Alpine, Arizona to cover parts of those states I have yet to drive through
• NY - Several places yet to revisit in this state that were missed in 2015
• NC - DONE
• ND - DONE but would like to drive from Bowman to Rapid City, South Dakota to cover a part of those states I have yet to drive through
• OH - Family research in several towns, one cousin in Columbus
• OK - Visit Chickasaw National Park south of OK City
• OR - DONE
• PA - Family history research in the southeastern quadrant of the state and north central part too
• RI - DONE
• SC - DONE
• SD - DONE but would like to drive from Rapid City to Bowman North Dakota to cover a part of those states I have yet to drive through
• TN - Visit Stones River National Battlefield near Nashville plus go to the library in Jackson to find the 1960 newspaper photo of me and four first grade classmates
• TX - Brother lives in this state as does a friend, also, would like to drive from Amarillo through Lubbock and on to Midland to cover a part of the state never driven through
• UT - Need to photograph the Zion park sign (despite two previous attempts to visit there) and actually go into the park
• VT - Want to drive entirely around Lake Champlaign, also, maybe some family history research
• VA - DONE but cousins live here
• WA - DONE but a friend lives in Seattle
• WV - DONE
• WI - DONE but maybe re-attempt (it was pouring rain years ago when there) to visit House of the Rocks and Taliesman near Spring Green
• WY - DONE but would like to drive through the central part of the state e.g. Casper through Dubois then south through Afton to Rock Springs
• AB - REALLY, REALLY, REALLY want to see Banff National Park and Lake Louise someday near Calgary in Alberta
• BC - Love Vancouver and Butchart Gardens plus much more north along the coast to see on Vancouver Island all the way to Port Hardy
• LB - Newfoundland/Labrador is worth one visit someday but it is a big undertaking since it takes a day each way just to ferry from Nova Scotia
• MB - Winnepeg, Manitoba is worth one visit someday
• NB - New Brunswick was gorgeous with the fall colors and I liked the three highways I drove going across the province but I never really stopped to see anything. Want to see Saint Johns and along the coast northeast of it, also the Kouchibouguac national park
• NS - Missed much here and would like to return someday, two national parks to visit: Cape Breton and Kejimkujik (dark skies)
• ON - DONE since visited Toronto and Ottawa
• PE - DONE since Prince Edward Island was unimpressive, so likely done here although I did entirely miss the western half of the province
• QC - DONE since visited Montreal and Quebec city and some towns south of them, plus, drove the entire coastline so unknown if will return here -- do not like feeling ostricized with the French everywhere
• SK - Regina and Saskatoon in Saskatchwean are worth one visit someday
• YK - Yukon is iffy if it is worth a visit someday since it is a long way to there and really nothing in particular to see or do except the scenery. Ditton Nanuvut and the Northwest Territories.