The get-away vehicle: 1998 Tahoe. He went to the car doctor last week - the "check-up" ended up costing us far more than the whole trip will probably cost, but he needs to be whipped into shape to pull the camper later.
We pulled out of the driveway at 9 a.m., as planned. Sunny skies, and about 55 degrees. First stop: Nanny’s house, bearing a basket of cat food (she’s feeding Lucy while we’re gone) and milk, lettuce, and a few other perishable things from our refrigerator. Next stop: car wash. (Why Joel wanted to wash the car at the beginning of a 1400 mile road trip is beyond my reckoning. Must be a guy thing.) Third stop: Walmart; while Joel filled the truck up with gas (at $2.55 a gallon, it took $63.00 to fill up the Tahoe), I went into Walmart and bought 8 pounds of breakfast sausage – both hot and mild – for Tim and Shirley (more about this later). Joel tried to buy ice at the gas station, but they sent him across the street to Topp’s BBQ (that’s Tennesseean for “barbeque”), where it was $1 cheaper. Hey, every little bit helps!
At long last we were on the way, and crossing the Memphis-Arkansas bridge over the Mississippi River at 10:15 a.m.
Look, Graham: Memphis has its own pyramid, right on the edge of the river:
Here’s the Mississippi River, viewed from the center of the bridge. It’s too wide to get in one shot. That’s an island in the middle.
The next big town is Little Rock, Arkansas, which we should reach in a little over 2 hours, if all goes well.
Eastern Arkansas is as flat as a pancake, except for Crowley’s Ridge, a long, narrow hump that seems misplaced in all this flatness. They grow a lot of cotton, wheat, and rice here. I’ve been trying to get shots of the rice fields for you, but there’s not much to see this early in the season. I did spot a crop duster at work, either fertilizing the fields or planting rice. When the ground dries enough to plow, the tractors will make earthen ridges that zig-zag across the rice fields, acting as miniature dams to hold water when they flood the fields, one at a time, with water pumped from ponds or artesian wells.
We Americans aren’t always smart enough to think up our own names for places, so we borrow them from other places.
On the other hand, we can sometimes be quite inventive....
Here in the Bible Belt, there are lessons even along the Interstate highways:
Jesus is everywhere, man. ;)
Graham, your e-mail comment about the whole of the UK fitting between Memphis and Albuquerque is just the kind of amazement that Benjamin Franklin used to try to get through Parliament’s heads before the Revolutionary War, when Parliament was thinking up ways to tax the American Colonies into submission. He wrote that England had no real concept of just how large a place this is, what abundant resources there were, and how easy it was for colonists to simply disappear west, into the western wilderness, out of the government’s reach. I suppose that Franklin, himself, had no real idea of how big it is, since it was another 50 years or more before Lewis & Clark made their expedition to the Pacific under the Jefferson administration.
12:15 P.M. – Little Rock, Arkansas: Interstate 40 skirts along the north side of Little Rock. With the first glimpse of downtown Little Rock, the terrain is suddenly, markedly different. I wouldn’t call it mountainous, but it’s definitely hilly. Looking out the windshield, we can no longer see 50 miles ahead! And then, barely as soon as I had time to type the description, the pancake-flat stuff started again, but in the distance I can see hills – probably I’m seeing the edges of the Ozark Mountains.
12:32 - Road signs say we’re 131 miles from Fort Smith, Arkansas. That’s right on the Oklahoma State line.
Just outside Conway, Arkansas, we are on road we’ve never travelled. Now the real fun begins!
1:30 – We had our first stretch/potty/lunch break at Lake Dardanelle State Park, just outside of Russellville, Arkansas. Temperature, 67 degrees. Beautiful, sunny day. Ham/cheese sandwiches on rye bread, bananas, cookies. The local schools must be having spring break, as there are lots of school-age children on the playground. There’s a fishing rodeo in progress, and trucks and boat trailers from all over the country – Wisconsin, Minnesota, Alabama, Louisiana, Illinois – line the parking lot. We took a swing through the campground before we left, to check out the camping spots, in case we want to bring the camper over here one day. It’s about 3.5 hours from Memphis. The campsites are fairly nice, with some right on the edge of the lake. It’s pretty, but there’s a nuclear plant smokestack across the lake that spoils the view and kind of creeps me out.
3:40 – Just whizzed past Fort Smith, Arkansas. (Relations of yours, Graham?)
Welcome to Oklahoma!
(Looks about like Arkansas to me.)
5:10 – Stopped for gas in Henryetta, OK, about 80 miles east of Oklahoma City. We made it 411 miles on the tank of gas we bought at home. While Joel pumped the gas, I went inside the little market for drinks and candy bars. Yeah, we’re supposed to be on a diet, but we’re not stopping for the day for another 100 miles, so pretend you didn’t see that part about the candy bars. We briefly considered checking out the local BBQ joint, just because they had such cute piggies outside.
We also briefly considered just stopping where we were, but thought it was best to get on down the road. Besides, I did not relish the thought of hearing that horse walk on the roof all night. ;)
Somewhere in Oklahoma. Nothing like a little good ol' American ingenuity, eh? ;)
Oh, and look at this! Yes, that would be snow, and 75 degrees, somewhere in Oklahoma.
6:30 p.m. – Oklahoma City. Buzzed right on through it, heading for Yukon, just west of here.
By 7 p.m., we'd checked into our motel and headed out to Alfredo's Mexican Cafe. It looked like a nice joint. We sat down, and our waiter came to the table and asked what we'd like to drink. "Do you have margaritas?" I asked, giving him a wink. "No, sorry," he replied. Those crazy Mexicans, always joking around. "Make mine a frozen margarita." "We don' have margaritas," he said, showing me the menu. HE WASN'T KIDDING. I resorted to beer - Tecate. Even though they rubbed the rim of the glass with lime and salt, it still sucked, and I'm still Jones-ing for a margarita. The food wasn't all that great, either. See if I trust the AAA travel guide EVER again.
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