Have you been following along with Octavia Pollock’s blog as she helps her friends Maxine and Paul drive two hroses and all their belongings across the country? You can read Days 1-3’s action in San Francisco To South Carolina With Two Horses, Two Cats, Two Trucks, Two Trailers And Three Humans, Fueled By Truck Stop Coffee, and One Day, Four States, A Few Tornadoes And Too Many Armadillos.

Wind blew and rain poured, but no tornadoes disturbed our rest last night, so we treated ourselves to a proper breakfast, with some reasonably edible hash browns and scrambled eggs. At the Shady Creek Ranch, revealed in the morning light to be a pretty, workmanlike place with neat green shutters surrounded by buttercup-strewn fields, Eigen and Echo were on fine form.

We gave them a walk and a bite to eat, Echo gorging on the grass as if his life depended on it. After the dead brown wisps of California, this lush greenness must be very heaven to these two. They were both full of beans, especially when the neat little Paso Finos said a cavorting hello. The Portuguese horses, small but powerful with well-muscled arched necks and long manes and tails, are bred and trained here, with about 40, of all ages and colors, filling the fields and barns.

Happy Paso Finos!

The groom showed me the two stallions, El Valeroso De LM and Joyero de La Hacienda, black and metallic chestnut respectively, both veritable powerhouses and capable of carrying even his tall frame.

We left at last, late as usual (it’s easy to write “6 a.m. departure” on a schedule, but the reality of mucking out the trailer, walking the horses, wrapping legs and so on, not to mention actually getting out of bed after a long day and late night, means it’s never adhered to), and set off back to the I-40.

There, Paul and the U-Haul, which had thoroughly redeemed itself by chugging pluckily along at 75mph ever since Arizona, parted from us to go southeast to South Carolina and the ultimate destination, while we headed northeast to Virginia and Echo’s new home. We had the longest drive yet ahead of us, 11 1/2 hours, and it was already 9 a.m.

Long drives mean frequent stops for watering the horses.

Tennessee is long. Really long. Especially when you’re following its diagonal border with North Carolina to cross into Virginia at the foot of the Appalachians.

We planned to stop for gas and lunch in Knoxville, but traffic around Nashville and bad weather slowed us down; at one point, we passed a stranded truck that had evidently spun and hit the barrier with both ends. The owner was standing dejected and bemused in the rain, poor bloke.

More storms!

Maxine did brilliantly to keep concentration and perfect control on the slippery roads, and we escaped anything untoward. Not quite at Knoxville, we nipped into a Buddy’s BBQ for some proper—and delicious—Tennessee barbecue food and decided to eat on the road. It proved to be the right move, as we immediately found a thunderstorm on our tail.

The kind of weather that is exciting and thrilling when you’re with humans becomes downright scary when you’ve got horses behind you. I don’t know what it’s like to be in a metal box with lightning flashing and rain battering on the roof, but it can’t be pleasant. Fortunately, there was never any untoward noise or motion from the trailer, and given the amount of hay they ate, it’s safe to say the weather left Eigen and Echo blissfully unperturbed.

We were so lucky not to be with Paul, however, as his phone calls revealed increasingly dramatic weather down in Georgia. A flash flood sent water up to his bumper at one point and at another, filling up with gas, hail began to batter the truck. All at once, the wind rose and truckers poured out of the gas station shouting to get on the road. Trees bent and whipped before the gale, crashing onto the freeway as the line of vehicles weaved through the debris. A tornado didn’t actually form, but it was a close-run thing. Maxine and I thanked our lucky stars that we hadn’t had to take Eigen through that lot.

The stormy weather gave way to blue skies as we neared the Virginia border, a welcome variation in a view that had consisted of trees, trees and more trees across Tennessee. I had no idea it was so wooded around here, and although there is a certain beauty to thick forests, it does get rather wearing after five hours.

However, we did have the opportunity to increase our armadillo count by 26 before Nashville. Tennessee armadillos are apparently even stupider than those in Arkansas. Oddly enough, we only saw two after Nashville, perhaps because the road was edging north, but it was amusing to think that those who lived between Memphis and Nashville were in an Elvis-country-music daze, wandering along in a happy haze until a whizzing metal monster sent them to the land of nod.

The funny thing about armadillos is that, unless they’re actually squashed, they lie on their backs with their paws upturned for all the world as if they’re asking someone to rub their tummies. It feels mean, considering we’re talking about the deceased, but they did make us laugh.

At long, long last, after a period of Californified time delay, we reached the Virginia border, which is marked by an enormous guitar, randomly enough. The light was gorgeous and golden, the sky a deep blue and the forested Appalachians blue and misty, leading away in ridge upon ridge. It was all so rich and green after California and the southern deserts that I’m sure the horses were distracted from their hay.

Into Virginia with its lovely green fields.

It grew dark as we counted down the miles, with me keeping Maxine alert as she balanced the trailer around the sweeping curves of the mountains. Normally, one would want to accelerate through the curves, but with the weight of the trailer pushing us downhill, gentle braking was necessary. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t have had such a long drive to do, but the weather and heavy traffic had delayed us and a further delay resulting from having to find another stopover point would have been even more uncomfortable.

We finally reached Morningside, Echo’s new home in The Plains, Va., at about midnight, and both horses were glad to reach their large, airy stalls. We let the cats loose in the trailer for the night and collapsed into bed. One day to go!