March to May in 400 miles

A car can make climate differences pretty obvious. The cherry blossoms are spent here down in the valley, but the hillsides were all decidedly brown when I climbed onto 81-south. The pears and apples were just getting rolling and the canopy trees were tentatively pushing out catkins. Somehow, our early burst of cherry and magnolia blossoms survived recent snow flurries - though I doubt the same occurred up in Saranac Lake.

An hour or two into my drive, it became obvious that the forests had caught red fire with maple flowers. As I wound down through the hills of Pennsylvania, the woods yellowed. Eventually they flushed green in the high-carved Appalachian hillsides above the hard, blue Susquehanna. I was very happy to arrive in early summer as I crossed the Mason-Dixon line, leaving PA's omnipresent "clean" coal and "massage" parlor billboards and the nation's worst radio stations behind.