To Arkansas!

Good evening.  This post finds me well, safely installed in my hotel in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

Here's the night time view from the Hilton Memphis last night.

And here's the sunrise from this morning, complete with lens flare.

  

So Purty

Don't worry, the windows are shiny from the outside and I did close the curtains while I was asleep so the window cleaner didn't get a fright.

 I left the hotel feeling slightly grumpy this morning.  Not sure what about, I think I have a bit of a stiff neck and this was making other parts of me complain.  Will try some stretches tonight.

Even with the grumpyness, I decided that I couldn't come to Memphis and not see Graceland, home of Elvis McPresley, so I duly plumbed that into the Sat Nav as a waypoint, it was only 20 mins from the hotel by car and a small detour in today's planned route.

Well dear reader, I took a wrong turn on the way there which caused me to realise that Graceland is not in a well-heeled or salubrious part of town.  Sat Nav guided me through my indescresion by rapidly re-routing me through a couple of vacant lots, past some abandoned houses and between a couple of trailer parks till I got on to Elvis Presley Boulevard.

I found the car park but baulked at the $10 parking charge, (it's $32 to get in to the house after that) I turned round and drove off, to see if I could find somewhere else to park.  Several factors prevented me from doing so.   I felt a bit self-concious in my Massachussetts registered Camry.  I didn't want to leave all my worldly posessions in a car which can be unlocked by looking sternly at it and I felt most importantly of all in this neighbourhood - I am white.


I hope I am wrong, and if I had decided to park up and walk to Graceland, I'd have been fine, but best not to risk it eh?

So, I made a U-Turn and on my way back to the Interstate I took this picture:

 Proof I was there!

The next problem was that because I didn't drive up the drive and stop on Elvis's porch, Sat Nav kept trying to direct me back down the road to Graceland.  I knew the rough bearing for I40 and the direction on it in which I wished to travel but it kept nagging me and teling me to 'Stay in the right lane and then keep left.'  'Take the motorway.'  'Perform a U-Turn when possible.' which did not serve my grumpyness any favours while I was trying to avoid catching anyone's eye, change gear with my right hand and drive on the wrong side of the road.  I switched it off and got to the road I needed then reprogrammed it later.

 

You are now leaving Tennessee after an un-necessarily stressful morning.

'Welcome To Arkansas'.  Except the welcome part is closed.  So: 'To Arkansas!'

I stopped at the 2nd rest-stop that I came to in Arkansas.  It wasn't as nice as the other ones.  Some parts of the Interstate here aren't in such good condition with huge potholes in the concrete paving, some of which have been badly filled with Tarmac.

This looks a bit like the entrance to an underground nuclear missile silo, but it's actually a bin.  Or maybe thats just what the government wants me to think.  All Arkansas rest-stops seem to have these.  Perhaps nobody's told them about the end of the cold war.

For Isla and Jim, this is a Horsebox.  I think the horses get TV and showers.

 An English truck.

Perhaps it was delivering to Palestine.

This part of I40 is getting rebuilt so there is a contraflow.

This is an advert telling me not to Adulterise.  Later there was one for a gun and knife show and after that there was one advertising dialysis.  Perfect if you get stabbed in the kidneys for sleeping with someone else's wife.

It's hard to describe how giant this flag in a McDonalds car park was.

So London is only a couple of hundred miles from Palestine.  I also passed a sign for Toad Suck which I didn't manage to get a photo of.

 Camry and I stopped at another rest stop about an hour from our destination.

I love when you round a corner or crest a hill and you can see the road stretching out in front of you, as far as the eye can see.

I made it to Fort Smith, however in this morning's fit of grumpyness I committed another rather foolish sat-nav error.  Tonights hotel is in Generic Numbered Street.  However it's not in Generic Numbered Street, Fort Smith, it's in another city a few miles out of town.  Sat Nav faithfully guided me to the address I fed it, however this was someone's house near the railroad tracks where the occupants clearly liked both kinds of music - country AND western.  I didn't take any photos of the neighbourhood, resplendent with several drive through Liquor Stores.

I made yet another U-turn and managed to re-program the Sat Nav on the move to the right city and arrived here in good time.

Checked in at the Hampton.

So my room has this girly flower motif outside.

Whereas next door's has a fighter plane!  What gives? 

The ice machine across from the lifts is called 'Scotsman'.

I walked to the nearest Wal-Mart and bought some new windscreen wipers for Camry - buggered wipers are something I really hate.  Today was the first day it has been warm enough for insects to venture out to be splatted on the windscreen.  I was fitting them in the dusk when a couple came out to get into the car next to me.

I got out of their way so they could get in their car and the man thanked me and commented on my nice new windshield wipers.  I explained to him that I had now effectively doubled Camry's value and he asked where my accent was from.  We chatted for a bit.  He guessed that my road trip was around 3200 miles, which it would have been if I hadn't promised to avoid Ohio and Indiana.  And Utah and Colorado.  I explained that I had been to Virginia Beach where I had had great fun on this lovely big bridge which makes the trip closer to 3500 miles.

Turns out he and his wife live in Virginia, so they know about the Bridge-Tunnel system.  It turns out they are also on a road trip and by the time they get home they will have travelled about 6000 miles, which is apparently quite normal, although he did say that the hellish price of petrol means it is less common these days.  He laughed when I told him its less than half the price it is at home.

Anyway, when I came out of Wal-Mart, there was this sunset going on.

  More sunset

On the walk back to the hotel I spotted my first drive-through cash machines.

My room for tonight.  It's suspiciously similar in proportion and furnishing to one I stayed in a couple of nights ago.

Night night readers.