Gotta love the South

Moving Day Three: Sleeping in an actual stationary bed is a good and wonderful thing. Especially when that sleep comes after spending something like 36 hours on the road. Of course, I think I only slept for about 4 hours, between FTP related rage, Dad's snoring, and just generally being unfocused and distracted sleep wasn't working out well. Oh well. We had crappy coffee in the hotel for breakfast and were on our way again.

Oklahoma is a rather pretty state. The parts we drove through all seemed to look like well-manicured (if somewhat due for a mow) golf courses. I've never seen so much open grass and rolling hills in my life.



I fell asleep at some point and woke up in Arkansas. Not a bad state, as long as you don't actually stop anyway. The signage here was strange to say the very least, and we say every stereotypical type of southerner along the way. They actually have a place called “Toad Suck Regional Park.” Toad Suck? I'm not really sure I want to know how this places ended up getting called “Toad Suck” but there it is. We also saw a large number of billboards advertising adult book and video stores with convenient truck parking. I know that San Francisco is supposed to be some sort of den of iniquity, but I have never in my life seen a huge road-side billboard for a porn shop touting the stunning trucking parking and wide selection of titles available in a convenient road-side location. But there it is. So much for the Bible Belt I guess. When we finally got to this place, it was, I kid you not, a huge massive bright red barn by the side of the highway. Scary.



We finally got to the Mississippi River and Tennessee around rush-hour. The Memphis sky-line was beautiful. I'd like to visit Memphis someday, it seems like an interesting place. The architecture is interesting anyway.



Actually crossing the Mississippi was a huge mile-stone for some reason. Up to the point, even after we had more than half the distance behind us, I felt somehow as though I was still able to go back. Once I got over that river though, I had no way back. The other side felt very Other somehow. I don't know why I work things up in my head this way sometimes, but finally crossing that river made the whole idea of starting my life over seem very real. Plus it was the first real, large river I'd seen so far. I saw the Potomac when I was in junior high, but California has nothing in the way of rivers like the Mississippi or the Potomac or the James.



I have to admit that I slept through most of Tennessee. We stopped for dinner in a town near Dixon I think, and Dad had enough coffee and sugar to keep him going through the night. I have never seen him that wired actually. It reminded me of Beavis eating too much sugar and turning into Cornholio.

What I did see of the state was beautiful though. All tree, billboards for porn, rolling hills and eventually mountains. Not like the Sierras, but still mountains. Somewhere in the night, it became Tuesday and we ended up in Virginia.