Another day on the road, we rolled out early about 11:30 am after a leisurely breakfast and a bunch of e-mails to answer. Neal couldn’t help but clean the bird droppings off the car. First he tipped some transient in the parking lot with the name of Freed Love (No Kidding) anyway Freed said that I was a lovely car and he sure wished he could afford of them but he was kinda down on his luck but he delivered a good story before $20 persuaded him that could go find someone else to talk to.
Neal needs to get a bottle of show n shine.
After that we got down the road to Memphis. We didn’t have time to visit Graceland but Gayle ran into Elvis at the visitors center, we picked up lots of Elvis stuff for the next visit.
A brief chat and photo session with the King in his younger days
Back on the road we looped around Memphis with thoughts of the Barbecue we missed and then crossed the mighty Mississippi and kept on rolling into Arkansas.
Crossing the Mighty Mississippee
From there we headed across Arkansas. We stopped in some little podunk town in North Arkansas for a sandwich and our first gas purchase. We had traveled some 305 miles on 11.3 gallons of gas — Al Gore can keep his Prius. We rolled on through the lovely North Arkansas scenery. Lots of swamps, duck ponds, rice fields, corn fields and cotton fields. It really is the prettiest part of Arkansas that Neal and Gayle have seen. But it was all new to me. It didn’t look like Spring Mountain.
We rolled on to some roadside overlook looking at a lake in North Arkansas. At that point we held Flash’s Bar Mitzvah ceremony because the obligatory 500 mile break-in was complete. No more poking along. At the point the computer said the average mileage was 29 miles/gallon. Not bad for an Automatic Tranny.
The overlook and Bar Mitzvah
The odometer reading was recorded for posterity in case the warranty folks ever have an opinion. After this event the departure from the overlook was a tad more brisk. We also passed a few of the folks that had previously passed us wondering if we had car trouble.
Finally 500 miles -- no more pussyfoot
We then rolled on to Ft Smith, were weren’t sure what to expect because none of us had ever been to Ft Smith AR before. Its a bit of a college town with an extension of the University of Arkansas and a bit plain and simple. Just a good example of a countrified town in rural America. Actually its the kind of simple place that makes a guy want to get up early and get on the road. When we questioned the waitress at dinner as to where the house wine came from, she replied — from the box in the refrigerator. That should give you an idea of the sophistication in this town. Actually, dinner was pretty good once we got past the salad dressing drenched iceburg lettuce.
The main drag at Ft Smith, it was not cruise night
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