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We’re at Melissa’s mom’s place, getting ready to sleep for a week after driving for a week.

The drive through the Great Smoky Mountains was quite nice — there’s a ghostly charm unique to the southern Appalachians. I hoped to spot evidence of the Appalachian Trail but found out I missed the turn-off on the Tennessee side of the border.

For now my main focus is kicking back after a long drive. I’ll post some pics for now and perhaps write a longer post on the experience of driving west to east later this week (if I get inspired.)

Approaching the Smokies east of Knoxville.

Wider shot of the same area.

Second of a pair of short tunnels under the range.

Found these wildflowers at a rest stop on the Carolina side of the border,

Almost there. Looks a lot like Tennessee, though the right of way isn’t groomed quite as well in North Carolina.

Rest time.

Another pleasant day of driving before we cross one last mountain range. Walking in the mountains is the essence of life itself, but driving in them is a drag after the spectacular-vista glow wears off.

I was driving into the morning sun across Arkansas so the photographic opportunities were scant. A shame because passing through the low hills of the southern Ozark Mountains as the fog burns off is a visual treat.

The countryside of Arkansas and Tennessee is downright charming, though the I-40 drive can get a little hairy if you hit Memphis or Nashville at rush hour. We timed it about perfect, hitting both before the traffic went nuts.

Let’s see the pics:

Something very green grows in an Arkansas farm field. The section from Fort Smith to Little Rock is all rolling hills, but the land flattens out east of Little Rock.

Crossing the Mississippi into Memphis, cradle of Rock ‘n’ Roll (and, to its eternal regret, the city where Martin Luther King was assassinated.) My aunt Vivian says she was born 60 miles north of here.

Not bad for somebody trying to drive and shoot and avoid causing a 17-car pileup.

Memphis has a shiny pyramid. I can’t say why.

Off to Nashville. Later I wished I’d remembered to look for a “Highway 61″ sign, the famous route down into Mississippi.

Wonderful country along this way. Must’ve been a hundred signs pointing to stuff I wanted to check out — state parks, battlefields, Loretta Lynn’s dude ranch. A guy with a canoe could paddle his life away on all the rivers I-40 crosses.

A lame shot of Nashville’s excellent skyline. Could’ve gotten a better shot but figured I had pressed my luck too far with all the driving and picture-taking.

Tomorrow: Across the Smoky Mountains and on to point of this expedition.

Context for today’s travels: A great-grandmother (or perhaps great-great; Mom, can you clear this up?) of mine was a full-blooded Cherokee whose people came to the Midwest on the Trail of Tears, a forced march from the area we now call — how’s this for irony — North Carolina.

I thought of her again and again traveling through the Indian Nations of Oklahoma, where billboard after billboard advertised a “Cherokee”-themed emporium of American Indian kitsch. What I thought of was one of my people dragged from their homes and ordered at musketpoint to relocate in a foreign land where they knew none of the local flora, fauna and hunting spots, where they had no survival traditions, where they were utterly dependent the U.S. government.

Back in the Bay Area it is of course quite fashionable to receive knowing glances from fellow intellectuals when you observe that the United States was built on twin foundations of forced labor and forced relocation. Interestingly, it’s deeply unfashionable to say such things in the company of the descendants of those who were doing the forced relocating.

All I’m saying: My one-sixteenth (or one-thirtysecondth) of Cherokee blood boiled all across Oklahoma. Of course things were cooled by the fifteen-sixteenths (or thirty-one thirtysecondths) of regular white-guy blood — though come to think of it, my Irish ancestors came to this land on Coffin Ships after the monstrous British injustice inflicted by the Great Potato Famine.

Such is the magic of America: Repression be damned, I came out just fine.

OK, history lesson over, let’s see some pics. They’re not super sexy because the drive was mostly flat, with farmland on both sides. A nice thunderstorm and tornado would’ve gotten the ol’ blood flowing, but it would’ve made the drive suck pretty badly, so I’m not whining too much.

This is just over the Texas border in the Panhandle east of Amarillo. You’re expected to be made of stern stuff when you drive across the Panhandle: only two rest areas with toilets the whole way; the other stops are “parking areas” or “picnic areas.” Hey, Texas has a lot of ground to cover.

This cross east of Amarillo is billed as the biggest of its kind in the Western Hemisphere.

The terrain greens up almost as soon as you cross the Oklahoma border. You’d scarcely guess there was a Dust Bowl here.

This immense wind farm was hard to miss. Appropriate when you consider how much oil was discovered in Oklahoma.

That whole Wind Whipping over the Plains of Oklahoma makes it hard to keep inspiring messages on sign boards outside gift shops attempting to cash in on our rich American Indian heritage.

Oklahoma City has a nice skyline — I-40 runs right next to it.

Posted in honor of Merle Haggard, who I suspect never stepped foot in Muskogee, Oklahoma, before penning his famous hit song about a town where even squares can have a ball. (Imagine being one of the Cool Kids of Muskogee — they probably still haven’t lived down the shame).

One other observation for those considering west-to-east traverses on Interstate 40: The terrain flattens from the Texas Panhandle all the way to the Arkansas border, which makes for unremarkable terrain but very easy driving. After two days of mountains and deserts, it’s a nice break.

Next stop: 100 miles east of Nashville by way of Memphis. Lands of our rock ‘n’ roll heritage; can’t wait.

Summary: A sweet 580 miles.

From Kingman, I-40 climbs up into the Arizona high country past the Arizona Divide and brushes the edge of Flagstaff, which has an impressive mountain range next door. Countless must-visit sites — Sedona, Grand Canyon, Meteor Crater — had to wait for another vacation.

It’s long and mostly flat for a couple hundred miles till the New Mexico border, where the terrain shifts rapidly and starts looking much like the Escalante region of southern Utah: Layered red cliffs with flats on top.

The drive from Flagstaff to Albuquerque is one of the best in the United States, hands down. Not quite as spectacular as California 1 (the Coast Highway) or I-70 through the Front Range of the Rockies at Denver, but in the same neighborhood, vistawise.

Oh, and we stopped for gas in Winslow, Arizona, and saw no girls in flatbed Fords or lame singer-songwriter types with longing looks on their faces. The guys in the mini-mart definitely had a Native American look about them (though the next-to-the-highway attempts to capitalize in the area’s Navajo/Hopi heritage were embarrassing. Somehow I suspect they did not camp out in shelters favored by the Cheyenne of the Northern Plains.)

But anyway, let’s see some pictures.

The Arizona high country west of Flagstaff is simply amazing. Looks nothing like the saguaro-dotted Arizona desert of the public imagination.

The terrain change at the Arizona-New Mexico border is as enchanting as the state’s motto promises. This big stone wall along the highway was just one example.

Highway sign near the Continental Divide. The sky got cooler as the day progressed.

Oh yeah, it rained a couple times.

Swell rock formation.

Easy to see why so many artists flocked to New Mexico. High desert sky is priceless.

Could not resist: yes, this is a right turn at Albuquerque (somehow I think the right turn options were narrower when Bugs Bunny introduced this gem into our culture.)

Well, that’s enough for today. It was painful to drive through two hikers’ paradises in the same day without getting out to do some walking on dirt; nice thing is, those mountains aren’t going anywhere.

Next stop: East of Fort Smith, Arkansas.

So the drive south on I-5 is about as expected: hills on one side, farms on the other. Somebody put up a bunch of signs on blank farmland blaming Congress for turning it into a dustbowl. Presumably the actual farmer was blameless.

Things started getting interesting when we started seeing the Joshua trees outside Bakersfield on the way to the Mojave Desert. But mainly it’s extremely hot. Like 110-plus (best guess; I’m not sure I’ve ever been outside in heat this hot before).

It’s a dry heat inside a pizza oven, too.

We pulled over for a second to snap a few pix on a road heading down toward Joshua Tree National Park.

This mountain range was near the California-Arizona border. Terrain definitely gets better as you move into Arizona. Still bathing-in-a-volcano hot, but nicer looking.

Here’s the Colorado River, the border between California and Arizona.

Desert scene from a rest stop on the Arizona side.

The buttes are starting to show up at as we get close to Kingman.

Next stop: Santa Rosa, NM. Should be some of the best scenery of the whole drive.

OK, so I woke up every 14 minutes for the past three hours wondering if it was Zero Hour yet. Turns out we’re just in range of Milpitas’ new free WiFi network (take that $10-a-day hotel internet ripoffs!)

Next stop, Kingman, Ariz. Why does California have to be so damn long?

I think I’ve done enough rambling about the meaning of life in the Golden State and the ugly turn the newspaper biz has taken. If I’m feeling energetic and not too dusty from the road, I’ll try to post nightly updates from motels along the way.