Arkansas

Let's just say that, through no fault of its own, Arkansas was the low point of our trip.  We'd been traveling for a few days, we didn't sleep AT ALL the night before, we'd been stressed/paranoid about our chances of surviving Memphis, and, finally, traffic was BAD.  So, perhaps understandably, Lucy and I got a little bit cranky.

First of all, the traffic.  Apparently every single vehicle in Tennessee and Arkansas suddenly merges into the I-40.  If you don't believe me, just check out google maps.  You will see that the 40 is joined by no less than six other freeways: the 79, 64, 61, 55, 63, 70.  It was quite a mouthful for our little GPS when she had to tell us that.  Needless to say, with all those roads converging, we were completely surrounded by semi-trucks.  Really, really slow semi-trucks.  It was excessively unpleasant.

Lucy and I hadn't really settled on a destination for that evening, so we decided we would just drive until we got tired, and then find a place with hotels to stop.  We ended up driving almost all the way through Arkansas!  We stopped in a little town near the border called Alma, Arkansas and booked a room at the Comfort Inn.  When I first tried booking the room, the girl at the desk said that she only had suites left and maybe I wouldn't want to pay for a suite since it was just my sister and I...maybe I wanted to check some of the other hotels in the town for a cheaper room.  In the most polite way possible I said something like "Give me that room!"  I was not about to get back in my car again that night, even if it did cost me an extra $20-$30 for a suite.

Lucy and I started lugging our bags up the stairs and to our room on the second floor.  After we dropped off the first set of bags I said something like "Ok, let's go get the rest."  Lucy said something like "I'll just wait here."  I said something like, "You'll do WHAT?"  With that I sort of huffed out of the door saying something like, "Fine, I'll do it MYSELF."  Lucy, who responds to guilt trips very well, begrudgingly got up and followed me out of the door rolling her eyes.  The evening was all sort of downhill after that.  There was more huffing, more eye rolling, there was even some sniping and sarcasm.  We are not proud of our actions - we knew we were being mean.  In fact, before I would say something I would often hear an internal something say "Don't do it.  Don't say that!"  But as exhausted as I was, my powers of self-discipline were weakened, and I said some snotty things.  Eventually I figured out that maybe it would just be better if I didn't say anything at all - that's a little lesson I learned from watching Bambi over and over as a child.  I figured by the next morning I would be well rested and at liberty to speak again without saying something terribly rude.

So there you go.  That was the rock-bottom of our trip.  We laugh about it now.  But at the time, there was no laughing.  At all.