Cherry Blossom Tour

Day 3
Today we celebrated a birthday, an anniversary and the fact that temperatures reached 90 degrees, 20 degrees above normal and tying an all-time record. The scenery got steadily more rolling as we moved from the foothills of the Appalachians into the Allegheny Mountains. We traveled 12 miles in West Virginia and then into Pennsylvania. We enjoyed seeing a covered bridge, hillside farms, Pennsylvania-style barns with louvers for windows, miles of forest, curving highways, and a steady, colorful array of blossoming trees and bushes. At the highest elevations, the leaves had not come out, but everything in Gettysburg tonight is very green. We have spent time at the Peace Monument within Gettysburg National Military Park and had a guided walk through the National Cemetery. Tonight we are free to enjoy some of the interesting restaurants within walking distance of the hotel.

Day 2
Sunshine, 86 degrees, blossoming trees (tulip magnolia, red bud, Bradford pear) and bushes (forsythia) gave us a beautiful day. The flat Illinois prairies of this morning became rolling hills with many trees by the time we checked into our Ohio hotel. We spent some quality time at the Indy 500, riding around the 2 1/2-mile track and looking at all of the displays in the museum. Trophies, racing memorabilia and cars from every era gave us plenty to look at. The Duesenberg was probably the favorite display.

Day 1
Lots of people, lots of luggage, and lots of anticipation today as we left on the Cherry Blossom tour. Even though much of the area is familiar to many of us, it is still exciting to see signs of changing seasons with some of the fields having been worked and with the grass getting greener the farther south we got. We found daffodils in bloom and trees leafing out by the time we arrived in Galesburg. We've gotten acquainted with people sitting around us, learned that the Mississippi flows east-west through the Quad Cities, and we've started looking at our lists of Broadway plays and maps of Manhattan, thinking about the days to come. With temperatures reaching a high of 67 degrees today (followed by a cool down when we ran into rain), we're looking forward to wearing short sleeves.