Through fog, through rain...

I felt a bit like a member of the US Postal Service today. My mom and I realized last week that I had several consecutive days off this week and decided that there was just enough time to squeeze in a quick road trip to visit my grandmother (of the living room) in Texas. I left Lexington yesterday after the plumbers left and drove the four hours to my folks' in western Kentucky, then we woke up and headed out this morning.

The first leg of the trip was insanely foggy (like, the pea-soup variety of fog), but it finally cleared (mostly) by the time we passed into Tennessee. It came back a bit as we approached the Mississippi River near Dyersburg, but not nearly as thick as it had been . We crossed into Missouri briefly, then made it to Arkansas. We were most impressed to have made it to our fourth state of the day in less than two and a half hours. I guess I forgot that we'd be spending most of the trip in Arkansas.

Just over the border, about the time the rain started, we came to the town of Burdette, which is my mom's maiden name. So what do you do when you're on a road trip with limited time? You stop and visit. Burdette is 105 years old and built on what was once a cotton plantation. There is still a huge cotton farm in the fields around town. At less than one square mile, we managed to drive around, through and back around (and to make stops at two of the three businesses in town--the post office and water company; no one was in at the Burdette Farm Office) in about thirty minutes.

We got back on the interstate and realized it was lunch time, so hopped back off at the next exit to grab a bite to eat. Needless to say, we managed to over-correct the quick time we had been making and between the two side trips, lost an hour or so. The rain got heavier as we approached Memphis, and shortly after turning west on I-40 it turned into snow. Not fun, and mom probably wasn't helped by my assurances that 'we were on the edge of the system' and it'd be 'sunshine and blue skies soon'!

But! Just before we got to Little Rock, what should appear? Why, the sunshine and blue skies! I'd actually started to give up hope (oh wait, we're in Arkansas, where Hope is a place we still believe in!)...

We stopped for the night south of Little Rock and have another 150 miles to go tomorrow. I'm trying to convince mom that we should take a side trip to the diamond park nearby (finders keepers!!) tomorrow before we set out. Seeing as she nixed a side trip to Hot Springs earlier today, I'm not expecting to win that battle, either.

See you tomorrow!