September 25
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The kids were the first ones up this morning. I found them in Eric’s office playing Tomb Raider. Linda fixed us a big breakfast of eggs, bacon and toast as we watched the Weather Channel and talked routing. We had no specific plans for this trip. We knew we wanted to see the Badlands of South Dakota. How we got there was up for grabs. We had discussed following river valleys…maybe the Tennessee to the Ohio, up the Mississippi, then westward with the Missouri and the Platte. But radar showed that Rita, now a tropical depression, had scattered heavy rain to our north and west. So any way we went, we were going to get wet. The river-valley idea would keep us in rain for a lot of miles. We could punch through the rain quicker if we headed due west and got beyond the Mississippi. There were tornado warnings all the way from Huntsville to Memphis, but it was still the shortest route to better weather. We discussed delaying a day, but nixed that idea, since we only had 13 days before Eric had to be home. So we pulled out the rain gear, suited up, and headed west, on US-72, towards Memphis.
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We were still dry at our first gas stop. It was windy and overcast, but no rain. Marissa had said grace over breakfast that morning and asked that God keep us dry. I was beginning to think that she had serious pull with the Lord. Alas, the rain began as soon as we left the gas station, first as sprinkles, then a steady patter, giving way to torrents as we passed under clouds so dark that day turned to night. All the while the wind kept buffeting us from the south, probably gusting to 40MPH. |
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As we rode through Mississippi, I noticed that folks there were really attached to their dogs. We passed a sign pointing to a coon dog cemetery, and later to a bird dog museum. They would have been interesting stops, had the weather not been so dreadful.
Finally we reached Memphis. The radar had shown the rain petering out here, but I wondered if the situation had changed while we had been on the road. We pulled into a BBQ joint for lunch, and I called Lana on the cell phone and asked her to check radar. She confirmed that it was still clear west of Memphis. “Can we head north up the Mississippi?” “Nope, still heavy rain to the north”. So much for our river valley idea.
After a lunch of beef brisket, we saddled back up. Our decision was to jump on I-40 and make time to the west, hoping for good weather tomorrow. The wind was howling up the Mississippi river channel, and I was glad to see that there was no slippery metal grating in the bridge deck…it was concrete all the way. In a few miles, the rain quit, and the sky began to show a bit of blue, with low clouds racing north with the wind that pushed us around in our lanes.
| We were ready to call it a day as we approached Little Rock, and did not want to get into the city, so we pulled off at an exit with a Holiday Inn Express. We also wanted to stop early while we were still in the east, because we knew that a lot of hotel rooms would be filled with evacuees from Hurricane Katrina, which had decimated the Gulf Coast just a few weeks before. Sure enough, there were a lot of Louisiana plates in the parking lot. |
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We made a good choice in hotels, but a bad choice in exits…because there was only one restaurant there, a McDonalds. After we settled in, we walked down to it, only to find that the lobby was closed for remodeling, and they were only serving from the drive-thru. I suppose we could of walked through, but we were kind of disgusted, and not all that hungry after our late lunch, so we pulled a can of peanuts out of my bags and hit the snack machine. That was dinner.
About 350 miles today.
