Up at 5:00 a.m. Packed up car. Woke up girls. Left Frisco at 7:13 a.m.
Eastward bound, breakfast at Whataburger in Sulphur Springs. I have but four words: Honey. Butter. Chicken. Biscuit.
Then on to the serious driving. All the way through Texas into Arkansas. Stopped in Arkansas at Visitors Center. Beautiful. (Seriously.)
More Arkansas. Wondered why it isn’t pronounced Ar-KAN-zuss.
Note: Truck drivers were 75% horrible. Regular drivers about the same. 95% of drivers don’t remember/know that you STAY RIGHT AND PASS LEFT.
Mostly sunny, rain on and off.
Girls have been incredible. Of course, we distracted them with Nick, Jr. TV shows on their new DVD player. That 7-inch screen has been a wonderful friend.
STORY WITHIN THE STORY: MAJOR accident on 40 East near Holladay. We had stopped at a truck stop on Route 69/641 to feed the girls and change their diapers. About to get back on the on-ramp, saw traffic at a dead stop. U-turned it back to truck stop. Hit “alternate route” and “3-mile roadblock” on the TomTom, and it gave us a route to go around the accident and get back to 40.
What the TomTom DIDN’T tell us was that it was going to take us through some back roads. Well, not back roads, as these were mostly lost roads. (We heard the faint sound of banjos being tuned.) And they weren’t so much “roads” in that sections seemed to be more gravel than asphalt or concrete.
But TomTom didn’t fail us, nor did the Google Map on my Droid. After a pretty scary half-hour or so, we were back on 191/Birdsong Road and headed back to 40 East.
Whew.
Ended up the day just east of Nashville. Comfort Suites, thy name is true. (The front-desk guy is awesome. Must try to get his name, especially after he hooked us up with milk for the girls’ last bottles of the day.)
All in all, about 12-13 hours of driving. 10.5 more tomorrow should be cake. And at the end, we’ll see some family.
To be continued…
Poppa Culture 