Posted by
flipsidedon on Tuesday, June 19, 2007 6:03:00 PM
On our way to Canada, my wife and I drove across East Texas, Arkansas, and Tennessee to Cookeville. Then we turned North and drove through North Central Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and Michigan all the way to the Canadian boreder at Sault Ste. Marie. Then we drove East over the top of Lake Huron, and then back down to South Baymouth, crossed on the Amazing Chi-Cheemaun ferry to the Bruce Grey peninsula that forms the western boundary of Georgian Bay, southeast across Ontario to Toronto, then down the west coast of Lake Ontario to Niagara Falls.
There was so much ever changing kalaidescope of beauty that it was hard to fathom. We took 1500+ pictures. But the two greatest things were the people we talked to along the way. Contrary to what you hear, flyover country is full of friendly, eager to help or to offer a kind word and a smile, hard-working and happy in their work, Americans who LOVE their nation. I knew all this, but it was so incredibly refreshing to spend two entire weeks away from the media and actually dealing with real people. I fell in love with our nation and her people all over again.
And once we entered Tennessee, there were so many public expressions of love of our nation, our freedom, and of our military who purchase and secure that freedom that we often had tears of gratitude in our eyes and experienced real joy just talking to these people. We took over 500 pictures of U.S. flags flying on poles and standards at homes, businesses, barns, mail boxes, home made kiddie trains out of barrels, tractors, construction rigs, buildings under construction, cars (painted entirely as American flags), warehouses, bridges, road-side displays of Uncle Sam and the statue of liberty and the bald eagle in rockers, benches, picnic tables, outhouses, roofs , grills of 18 wheelers, huge oil tanks at refineries, and a lot more; and MIA and POW flags flying with the nations colors, painted on the sides of barns and homes and park benches, and engraved on walls of memorial, along with memorials and slogans of "never again" painted next to them.
My congratulations and gratitude, as well as respect, go out to the people of Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Michigan. You put the rest of us, including Texas that I had thought of as being one of the more patriotic states, to shame. And you motivate me to put up bigger and better displays at my home.
I challenge all of you to do more to display our pride in our nation, our gratitude for our freedom, and our devotion to the men and women who serve all of us by defending freedom. Those four states show us how it can be done.
I have already added 35 of the 500 pictures of flags and other patriotic images from out trip onto our website's patriotic images and www.flipsideshow.com. I will continue to add more in the coming days and weeks. And please send any such pics that you have to me so I can add them for your state.