Summary, Odds and Ends

A pretty much unedited summary. I have given up trying to be stylish. Even grammatical. I misspell things. Probably the only half-decent writing is the story about the bison I encountered when I got lost walking on the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve.

I think this trip was about 3,000 miles. Since the wives died in 2009, we have maybe been 30,000 miles - some in Bob's Z4 sports car and some in his Land Cruiser. On this and other trips we have seen a lot of the middle and eastern parts of the country - every state east of the Mississippi. I don't know what I have learned.  But the U.S. is big.(I have developed a fondness for it which is odd for me because I don't do much belonging.)  You don't know big until you get butt numbing and mind numbing tired. You've got to be on the road. You've got to be bored most of the time. 400 to 500 miles a day. We've seen lots of sights but it is the land one of us watches while the other drives. That sticks with you. The gradual change of country and crops. Feeling the heat the wind blow (OK we ran the air conditioning - even in the Z4 with the top down and usually stayed in Hamptons).  The passage of little towns - the smallest mostly run-down.  Witnessing economic changes first hand. Also realizing that these people are people. That the men are red faced and strong and that knowledge-workers probably don't need bodies. That seems important. On other trips we went though long stretches of Appalachia where there where no stores, no schools, no doctors - only combination gas stations and frozen pizzas places. I don't know how we did all this without killing one another. I snapped once. I also appeared to wake up crazy one morning and Bob drove the sports car straight through from Detroit to Gastonia. I called it going down the backbone of the witch. And Bob got quiet. But it was probably his morning stories that kept us going.  (Some of New England had bad places - like Appalachia.)

I don't know - I just don't know.

If I go back - and I surely won't - will I? I'll go to the prairie then to the great sand dune and then up North to watch nephew Henry race. I'd like to climb down to St. Jacob's Little Well cross the fence to where the Buffalo graze - maybe see the one who now wears my hat to see what the big old ill tempered son-of-a-bitch has to say about that. I'd to lie out at night and watch the stars. The brochure says you can do that. But it all depends on courage, health and sanity.

Bob's Detail List Of Trip

Bob is a list maker and he did a fine one here.

Day one:

North Carolina

Shelby
Asheville
Waynesville
Cherokee
Nantahala Gorge
Murphey

Tennessee

Enter near Ducktown
Lunch in Ocoee at Subway
Cleveland
Chattanooga
3 miles in Georgia on Interstate 24
Monteagle
Stopped for pictures at the University of the South in Sewanee
Train engine picture in Cowan
Winchester
Fayetteville
Pulaski – birthplace of the KKK
Lawrenceburg and David Crockett State Park and the Trail of Tears –
 

Day Two:

North to Memphis – 11 miles
Visited Peabody Hotel: No ducks
Drove down Beale Street
Visited Sun Studio “Birthplace of Rock and Roll”

Meet two brothers traveling from Calif. to Florida. Had been to Austin, Texas now in Memphis, going to Nashville. – One brother has recording studio in England the other was retired in Calif. One had meet Earl Scruggs and in fact had been part of a band that had played at an event with Scruggs. Saw them again at Graceland.

Back to Peabody- the ducks had come down
Lunch at BB King’s on Beale Street

Graceland after I caused us to tour the Memphis Air Port and Fed-XLeft Graceland to return to Hernando and Interstate 55 was a parking lot.

Mississippi

Selmer – turned south to Corinth, Mississippi
Cross North Mississippi to Olive Branch for rest room stop behind church
Horn Lake turned south on Interstate 55 to Hernando, Mississippi
Checked into Hampton Inn and ate leftovers from manager’s party at motel
 Turned right on 304 and drop into delta country in Tunica, Mississippi.\Clarksdale: Greyhound Bus Station:

Ground Zero: Intersection of the devil; Coffee Shop; Morgan Freeman's place, and my old friend Ronnie Drew at his store “Blues Town Music”. This was a surprise because I asked a member of the band at Morgan Freeman’s place if he knew Ronnie and he told me Ronnie was four doors down at the music store.

Cleveland for the night at Hampton Inn
Boyle
Greenville: Stopped at Welcome Center then toured downtown including the levy; the Mississippi was high covering some of the light poles.

Arkansas

Pine Buff: Lunch at Chinese Buffet where Tom’s fortune cookie contained no fortune.
Hot Springs and Hot Springs National Park (tom: place with enema and douche machines)
Hollis

Dardanelle - Fort Smith for the night at Hampton Inn after dinner Red Lobster

Day three:

Oklahoma

Fort Smith National History Site: Judge Parker the hanging judge’s court house (tom: hang six at a time; one man tried to hang dog)
With the threat of bad weather we drove straight thru Oklahoma on Interstate 40
Many Indian Nations
Oklahoma City
Clinton
Elk City: Checked into the Hampton Inn; Cheyenne: Visited Back Kettle National Grassland and Washta Battle Field where George Custer wipe out Chief Back Kettle’s people. Visited a graveyard on a high hill in the prairie and returned to the hotel. Ate lunch at BBQ in front of hotel and dinner at Mexican Place downtown Elk City.

Day Four:

Cheyenne
Shattuck
Laverne
Rosston

Kansas

Crossed into Kansas at Englewood, Kansas – Wide open spaces two bathroom stops on side of US 283

Big Basin Prairie Preserve
St. Jacobs Well
Minneola
Dodge City for lunch at Mexican Place near Boot Hill
Mullinville –Yard art
Greensburg – Big Well
Pratt – Lettuce train passed us while we were going 70
Hutchinson: Hampton Inn Dinner at nice Italian Restaurant downtown

Day Five

Newton
Peabody
Strong City: Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve
Emporia
Burlington
Yates Center: Lunch at Pizza Hut
Neodesha
Parsons

Missouri

Joplin
Springfield: Hampton Inn: Dinner Cracker Barrel

Day Six

Springfield
Mansfield
Poplar Bluff
Sikeston

Illinois

Cross Mississippi river into Illinois at Cairo

Kentucky

Cross Ohio into Kentucky at Wickliffe:lunch at Hill Billy Café (Tom: not the same as two other times on Henry trip)
Clinton
Fulton

Tennessee

Wildersville pick up Interstate 40 east
Cookeville: Hampton Inn: Dinner at Cracker Barrel

Day 7

North Carolina

Interstate 40 to Asheville
Interstate 26 to Tryon
Hwy 74 east to Gastonia

Here are pictures that can't be fit in any of the other categories.

I could find categories for most of these but the day is late I am out of energy, 

 

In Clarksville Miss. Decay - the onset of entropy is more interesting than neatness which is really entropy in the making.  

 

 

Entropy is working on this Greyhound station in Clarksville.  The Australian woman's coffee shop (below) on the other corner.

 



 



Woman sits at coffee shop counter in Clarksville Miss. I went in on a whim, running across street. A friendly Australian woman runs coffee shop. This picture was supposed to include her. She would not tell me how she got here - just smiled and said it's a long story. I had been referring to the owner as British and the other woman said her friend did not like that. It was across the street where there is a run-down Greyhound bus station (above).

 



Bob likes trains and knows a lot about them.

 

At 11:00 AM and 5:00 PM Mallard ducks are herded down the elevator in and out of lobby in fancy Peabody hotel.



We just thought it funny. I don't know where.



Continuing my interest in decay, this is in Greenville.



Ducks in pool in Peabody Hotel in Memphis.



Big Hebrew Temple in Greenville Miss.

 

Should be in Blues section.

 

Boat ramp in Clarksville. Does not look as steep as it is and is damp - the surface is slippery. We were afraid to get any closer. 





 



Bag of trash and based of lights underwater. I suppose I am bragging but Bob and I have crossed the Mississippi in every state in the mid west.

 





 

A marker noting path of the Trail of Tears when Federal government moved Eastern Indians to get their lands. Lots of the markers until we got to where the descendants now live.  

 

Every now then we drove through sections of the old coast to coat Route 66 (remember the song). In this one the town is out to make a buck. Many of these towns take advantage of whatever history or geography they've got. However I don't remember towns connections with the plains. It generally seems too wild.