Memphis

I know what you're thinking. You're sitting there saying to yourself, "When the heck are they gonna actually get somewhere?" I know this, because, at the time, we were saying the exact same thing. Actually, as we neared the Arkansas/Tennessee border, what we were saying was something a little more like this:

"OHMYGODWE'REFINALLYHEREICAN'TBELIEVEIT!"

Hitting the Tennessee state line meant something else: crossing the mighty Mississippi. According to Wikipedia, there are four bridges spanning the Mississippi River at Memphis. Two are railroad bridges, so we're not going to talk about them. The remaining two are Hernando de Soto Bridge and the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge. The Hernando de Soto Bridge (or "New Bridge") was opened in 1973 and name in honor of the 16th century Spaniard who explored this region of the Mississppi River. It is a through arch bridge, and if you're entering Memphis on I-40, this is the bridge you'll use.

We crossed the Mississippi driving down I-55, which meant we crossed on the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge, a historic bridge that is over sixty years old. It was built in 1949, and Memphians call it the "Old Bridge," to distinguish it from the Hernando de Soto Bridge. A cantilevered through truss bridge, it is 770 feet long and clears the river by 112 feet. And it has narrow lanes too, so if bridges are already kind of scary for you, bypassing this one might be a good idea. Especially when the roads are slick from rain.

It is actually a beautifully-constructed bridge, and the architecture can definitely worth taking a few minutes to admire.

Crossing that bridge brought us a little closer to our goal of that nice, soft bed that was waiting for us in the City of Memphis. Memphis was founded in 1819 and named after the capital of ancient Egypt. As you might expect, Memphis quickly became a transportation hub, and today is the second-busiest cargo port on the River, and fourth-busiest inland port in the U.S. Memphis is home to over 670,000 people, making it the largest city in Tennessee. It is also home to a lot of good music and a lot of good barbecue.

Now, being from Texas, the only place to get real barbecue, we can be rather picky about our slow-smoked meats. But I knew that I wanted to try some real Memphis barbecue before we left, and since we were leaving in the morning, we were having bbq for dinner!

After checking into the hotel, which was surrounded by a tall steel fence that held warning signs that the parking lot was covered with survellience cameras, we discovered that Neely's BBQ was just a couple of miles away. So we dropped our luggage in the room and climbed into the car again.

If you have never been to Memphis, let me give you this advice. Do your homework, stay in a nice area of town, and don't go out after dark. It's a scary-looking place. But it was still light out when we went in search of barbecue, and thanks to our handy-dandy-GPS, we found it pretty easily.

Those of you unfamiliar with the Food Network will have no idea why I was a little excited to eat here. The Neely's have their own show on the Food Network, and this BBQ is what kind of made them famous. If you walk into this restaurant without any of this knowledge, you will be educated soon after entering. Huge four-foot banners with the Neely's picture and the Food Network logo hang throughout the restaurant, and the walls are adorned with pictures of the Neelys with other Food Network stars.

The decor was typical BBQ restaurant fare. Checkered table cloths, wood floor, booths and tables, all well-worn. The service was...well, it left much to be desired, as our waiter, who couldn't have been older than nineteen, spent most of his time hanging out in the kitchen. I think the cook must have been a really cute girl that he wanted to date. But the food was A+. We each had the sliced beef sandwich, and the beef was lean and cut thick. The sauce was a little thin for my taste, but overall, it tasted a whole lot like Texas barbecue. The cole slaw had a unique taste, a little sweet, with a little sour, and we thought that the "secret ingredient" might be honey mustard.

Something we saw on the menu that we learned was unique to Memphis was spaghetti BBQ, which is just spaghetti covered with barbecue sauce and smoked meat instead of pasta sauce. We didn't try it, but maybe next time.

After a long day on the road, the first leg of our trip was completed. Next up, central Tennessee!

Escaping Texas

We knew that the driving days would be tough. They would be long and they would be boring, but we would have that reward of a soft bed in the friendly confines of a Hampton Inn.

But it was lunch time, and we were still in Texas. Like I said in my last post, Texas is one big (expletive deleted) State. Finally, about an hour after we had stopped to refuel our vehicle and ourselves, we saw a ray of hope:

TEXARKANA!

"The City So Great It Took Two States"


"Twice As Nice"


Texarkana was founded in 1873 at the junction of two railroads. The original surveyors believed the town would share land from TEXas, ARKansas, and LouisiANA, hence the city's name, but after all the politics were done, Texas and Arkansas came out the victors. Texarkana is still a major transportation hub for this region of the US, and the home to the sole remaining Kmart in Texas (we saw it, but didn't stop). More importantly, reaching Texarkana meant we were finally on the cusp of a new state: Arkansas!

As stoked as we were to finally have made it out of Texas, we were rather disappointed to discover that Arkansas look a whole lot like East Texas. Trees. A whole lot of them. But we had set a mini-goal of Little Rock, where there was a nice mall and an Eddie Bauer store we wanted to visit.




What? We're women. We like to shop. Don't judge.

Stopping at the mall turned out to be a really good idea, because we were a bit road weary at that time, and we were able to really get up and stretch our legs. We also got to see a Chik-fil-a firecow!

As exciting as our break was, we had to get back on the road, because our nice, comfy bed was still 140 miles away. So we got back on I-40, passing, for the third time, this dude:






A flat-bed truck transporting a military vehicle.

It certainly wasn't the only vehicle we passed multiple times on our trip, but it was one of the most interesting ones. In fact, spotting vehicles we passed more than once became a bit of a game, as did identifying license plates from different states. And of course, the classic cars making a cross-country trip!


Things were pretty uneventful (code for tree-filled view) for much of the state. Until we were just West of the Arkansas/Tennessee border, when we ran into a thunderstorm. Now, being from Texas, we are accustomed to storms that appear out of nowhere, drop anywhere from three drops to three inches of rain and then disappear just as quickly, so we were not alarmed in the slightest by the appearance of rain and thunder. What scared the bejeebus out of us was how the natives reacted to the challenge of wet weather.


Apparently, the "thing" to do in Western Tennessee is to pull over onto the shoulder and stop and wait until the rain has passed. Or, if you're in a hurry, then you don't pull over. You reduce your speed to no more than ten miles per hour and drive with your hazards on. I feel very confident in sharing with all of you that if you were to do either of these in Texas, you would get squashed like a bug on a windshield of a car going eighty. It's dangerous and stupid. And the rain really wasn't that bad. Sure, there were patches where the drops were pretty big and the rain was thick, but overall, not impossible to navigate.

Texas is Really Big. (Really!)

People who are not from Texas or have never been to Texas or have never attempted to drive across Texas have a hard time understanding just how big the Lone Star State actually is. So to help those of you who fall into this category, I've pulled some facts from the Texas State Almanac.

Now we all know from geography class that Texas is the second-largest state in the US, not even half the area of the largest state, Alaska. But what does that really mean? Well, its 268,581 square miles of land and water accounts for seven percent of the land and water of the United States.

Big deal, you might say. Seven percent? Pfft! That just means that ninety-three percent of the US isn't made up of Texas!

Ok.. How about this: Texas is as large as all of New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and North Carolina.

Combined.

Now you're a little more impressed, aren't you?

The longest straight-lined distance, as the crow flies, is from the northern most western corner of the panhandle to the tip of the Rio Grande River at Brownsville, and that crow would have to fly 801 miles. An East-West flying crow would only have to cover 773 miles at the state's widest girth.

Unfortunately, our roads were not designed by crows, so if you were to drive that east-west route, you would pass 880 mile markers along Interstate 10. Soon after you cross the Sabine River into Texas, you see a mile sign that tells you just how far you have to drive to get to El Paso. I always thought that was the cruelest sign ever made.

But, luckily, we weren't driving all the way across the state. We just had to get to Texarkana to get out of Texas, a mere 300 mile trek.

One other thing to note about Texas is that she (we Texans usually refer to our state in the feminine for some reason) has seven different regions, most of which happen to look just like some part of the other ninety-three percent of the country. We spent most of our time driving through the Piney-Woods region of the state. I'll bet you don't need me to tell you how this area got its name. I can also assure you that it looks a whole lot like Arkansas and Western Tennessee, exept for a few quirky roadside oddities such as these:

You'll have to click on this picture to make it bigger, but these enterprising folks have a craft store next to their house. Right off the highway, which is great if you need to pick up a yard ornament or a porch swing on your way out of town.

Now if lawn furniture or seasonal decorations aren't your style, or if you're running short on cash, you can always stop at Po-Man's Fireworks to pick up some entertainment and some boiled peanuts. They have high-quality products at the lowest prices, and if you don't believe them, you can check them out on the web. Gotta love those high-tech rednecks.

We all know the three most important rules of real estate: location, location, location. One of these entrepreneurs paid attention in economics class. Where better to put a tattoo parlor than next to a liquor store!

These are just a few of the roadside offerings available to travelers in Texas. You can also buy "fresh" vegetables, home-made jams and jellies, pinatas, puppies, and just about anything else you can think of. I'm sure if you drove long enough, you could find someone with a roadside stand selling it. But we didn't have time to stop and shop. Our goal for day one was Memphis, and we had a long way to go.

Hitting The Road

Friday, July 16 started out very busy. Breakfast, exercise, feeding and medicating the animals, taking Max for a walk and then to the kennel, all before 8a.m.! Scout was expectedly grumpy, while PJ was only mildly concerned by his new surroundings. Max was his usually bouncy self, excited by all the new people he was convinced wanted to pet him. They took Max back to his kennel, and then the cats were taken to their condo. PJ cooperated, and gingerly exited his carrier when given the opportunity, but Scout was having none of it. He greeted the open carrier door with a gutteral growl and hiss. The kennel assistant then tilted Scout's carrier, hoping, I'm guessing, that Scout would just slide on out of that carrier into the kennel, but Scout held his ground. Meeting failure once more, the KA turned the carrier completely vertical and gently shook, but somehow that big, fluffy, ornery kitty managed to remain safely in the carrier. After our gaffaws died down, I went in to help the KA. I reached into the carrier to pull Scout out, but he growled, hissed, and swatted my hand away, so I warned Scout we could do things the hard way if he really wanted. And we did. We disassembled the carrier and picked him up from above. He was not happy, and I think a little bit surprised that we violated his "safe place." Now that everyone was safely tucked away in their new personal spaces, we could go back to the house and pack up the car.

After wrestling with our luggage and all the other things we took with us, and discovering the secret to the delicate puzzle of packing the car, we finally hit the road about a quarter to nine. We were on our way!

Twittercation

We just got back from our epic road trip to visit some Twitter peeps. We hit ten states in eight days, covering over 3,000 miles. We saw some rain, a few accidents, a bazillion trees, and had a lot of fun and great company. We took well over a thousand pictures, and as I pick them out and edit them, I'll post them here along with a chronicle of our adventures.

To get things started, everyone we met on our trip got an official Summer 2010 Wolfefans' World Tour Tee with this graphic on it. (click to enlarge)

More to come....