Today, we left Jasper after a free continental breakfast. We were concerned about the storm system passing through the southeast, but after passing through some heavy rain near Tupelo, Mississippi, the weather was clear. The hills continued and, much to Josh’s dismay, our MPG was consistently terrible.
After about 2 discs of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, we passed through Memphis and I saw the Mississippi River for the first time in my life. I was so impressed by it, I wanted to find a place to pull off and have a look. This turned out to be more difficult than originally anticipated. We got off on an exit that led to a dirt road. The dirt road led us through flooded fields and creepy trailer parks. Though we couldn’t safely get close to the river, we did get some excellent views of the Memphis skyline. We stopped once to take a picture, then realized we would probably get stuck in the mud if we stopped again. I took the rest of the pictures from the car window. We rumbled through mud puddles and over fallen branches, but, miraculously, the car and trailer were undamaged (albeit a little dirty). In all, it took a good 30 minutes to find our way back to the interstate. We headed back towards Memphis and discovered a small park where we got a perfect view of the mighty river. Had we been in a hurry, this would have been a frustrating experience. However, we were in no rush, so this ended up being an amusing adventure to break up the trip.
We crossed over the Arkansas border and were shocked to see just how bad the previous night’s storm had been. We saw many houses and fields almost entirely under water. Occasionally, we would see someone trying to rescue their belongings from a small home or trailer. In spite of the flooding, however, we found Arkansas to be very pretty, and even stopped at an overlook to stretch our legs and throw the baseball around for a bit.
Finally, we arrived in Van Buren, Arkansas and checked into our newly built Holiday Inn Express. It has an indoor pool, which we will swim in as soon as I finish writing this entry. I was quite impressed with how nice the hotel was until I discovered a sign that read ‘Employee’s Only’. Really, Holiday Inn?
We went to Chili’s for dinner, where we learned that in Van Buren, restaurants must be private clubs with memberships in order to serve alcohol. This Chili’s managed to get a private club license and the waitress gave us a free ‘membership’, allowing us to have some beers.
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