Thursday, February 5, 2009

road trip: day 2 (highlights)

So yesterday we passed Talladega and the track there. As soon as I saw the name I knew it was that place from that movie. I'm not into racing and I've never seen that movie as I refuse to watch Will Ferrel for more than 3 minutes at a time under any circumstances. But when I heard the name Talladega Nights-- that just sounds Floridian to me. Nope. Alabama. Alabamaian?

After eating in Birmingham-- which is *massive* and has all the these curvy overpasses that remind me of weird roller-coaster dreams, we spent the night in Jasper. If it's not the BINGO capital of the world, it should be. There were like 12 massive bingo parlors in this itty-bitty town . . .

Today we crossed into Mississippi and the section of road between Alabama and Tennessee was brown. Really odd. We were only in Tennessee long enough to pass through Memphis. Didn't see Elvis, but did see a sign about Graceland.

Mississippi-- what sticks with me a sign I saw about how "Our Children Can't Read". Well, if it was my kid they were talking about I'd be a bit upset. And if your kid really can't read, you probably don't much either . . . but what do I know, I'm from Georgia.

Arkansas was much more mountainous than I expected. We did one obligatory lookout thing, but the view was actually better from the road. Mothermine says I'm not supposed to be looking from the road. It's dangerous.

What is that about? I'm a good driver. It's all those other people she needs to be worried about! Actually today wasn't too bad on the idiot scale, except for this one guy who was *literally* driving down the middle of the road. As in straddling the center line. Mothermine thinks he was worried about his truck getting scratched on the stone barricades to either side. Who cares? The road is divided into two lanes. You get one or the other! How hard is this to understand?

Arkansas also has a town called Galloway. I just wondered if it has anything to do with the Louis L'Amour book by the same name.

Like Oklahoma has a place called Chekotah-- which looks an awful lot like Chakotay. Especially when you consider that Nerys sounds so much like nariz which is Spanish for nose . . .
(No it's not code it's Trek)

Oklahoma does finally have me feeling that I'm headed out west though. The trees are sparser and the horizons are farther apart.

I actually had a little daydream about the whole space between trees being filled with plains grass-- as I'm sure it was once upon a time-- and being dropped in the middle of it. Quiet I'm sure.

There honestly hasn't been much of a chance to use the camera at any point where I thought something was interesting enough to take a picture of it. Please bear with me. I promise *lots* of pictures later this trip!

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