On the Road again??

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On the road again – wait a minute, we are rarely on the road because we fly. But this time we are doing a 21 day road trip to TX, then AZ, and back just in time for the next Lutheran Marriage Encounter April 22-24.



On Friday we pulled out at 7 to sleet and some snow all the way south past Columbus.

It was fascinating to see the leaves on the trees getting more and more prominent with each hour driving south.

By Cincinnati we saw daffodils.

By Louisville KY redbuds, and then forsythia.

We discovered that KY is divided into two time zones!

And that the National Corvette Museum AND the Fruit of the Loom headquarters are in Bowling Green.

By Nashville we were also learning about the Nachez Trace, which is evidently a 444 mile long byway that allows bikes. Our guess is it’s like the Blueridge Parkway.

An hour from Jackson TN we saw lots of trees down and broken – from those tornadoes last week?

We are keeping ourselves amused by doing many Google searches about the sites we see (Shiloh battlefield), crocheting winter hats for next winter, and Dr.Gary Chapman’s 101 conversation starters for couples.

After 11 hours on the road, with stops of course, we arrived at our hotel and hunted for dinner. What to eat in Tennessee? A sushi restaurant? It was so busy we waited over a half hour, but it was amazing. Just about every fourth roll had crawfish in it, so that was one of our choices, and the very very best! So we reckoned we ate some native foods after all.

Unlike our friends who plan their trips in between electric charging stations, we’ve gone from Sam’s to Sam’s, about 350 miles, and getting just over 32 mpg in our Kia Soul.



it‘s Saturday and a pitiful breakfast but we were off again by 7 am, for Memphis, Little Rock and eventually s. of Dallas.

We drove through Memphis, and I do mean through, much to David’s chagrin, as the GPS actually avoided the inner belt to go straight in on normal streets. And this after pretty dense traffic approaching the city! Still, it enabled us to see the beautiful arts and crafts styled homes, St. Jude’s research Hospital for Children, and the huge Bass Pro Shop store at the giant pyramid. I was really busy doing the Googling there. We had no idea why or how Danny Thomas started St. Jude’s (in gratitude to the patron saint of lost causes when he finally got started in show business), or how the huge pyramid that used to be a basketball arena and had the Mike Tyson, Lennox Lewis bout turned into a humongous Bass Proshop. Wish we could have stopped.

Once across the wide Mississippi River into Arkansas we saw very wet fields and discovered that Arkansas is the #1 producer of rice in the US. We did see lots of the actual ponds, but maybe those damp fields grew rice too?

Finally the flatness turned into slightly rolling hills.

So we had lunch in a gas station parking lot -- but it was the left overs of that sushi and apple and cheese and that was fine.

By Texarkana the trees are in full fresh leaf, in between huge swaths of conifers, and now an hour or so from our hotel in Dallas, we are seeing lots of ranges, some fancy houses, and a fair number of cows. So maybe the local food tonight might be brisket?

We pass thru Little Rock and Hope and thought we'd stop in and admire Billy's old home - naw.

Every time we drive somewhere we bet each other on how many different license plates we’ll see – we passed mine yesterday and are up to 35, 3 shy of David’s 38.

We’ve even been counting birds – and were very amused by the great-tailed grackle who smelled the crawfish in our lunch. They sure can make funny sounds – like sirens and crackling. Only 8 identifiable species of birds so far.

We checked one thing off the list already: real tender brisket barbeque for dinner. It's ended up being a lovely day, sunny and cloudless, just a little chilly for me in shorts.

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