Arkansas to New Mexico

September 22, 2011

Lucy and I woke up in Alma, Arkansas.  We packed our bags and then I quickly looked up a few cities in Texas that we might stop in later that evening.  I figured we could make it to Amarillo, Texas in a comfortable amount of time, so I looked up addresses and phone numbers for a few hotels there.  After writing all the information down, I shut off my laptop and packed it away with the rest of our things.  Then I said "Ok, let's go get breakfast."  Lucy, who had not made a peep that entire morning suddenly said "Breakfast is over!"  I looked at the clock.  It was 9:06 AM.

Me: "I thought breakfast ended at nine-thirty."
Lucy:  "No.  It ended at nine."
Me:  "Are you sure?"
Lucy: "Yes."
Me:  "Then why didn't you say something ten minutes ago?!"

Lucy just sort of glared at me which led me to believe that the reason she just sat there watching me look up addresses in Texas which I could absolutely have done later, while our free breakfast hour ticked to a close, was because she was still just a little bit miffed about the previous evening.  I'm sorry, Lucy.   know I shouldn't have been so mean.  I still think you're crazy for not saying anything, though.  Seriously, why would you deprive yourself of a FREE breakfast?!  It seems like self-preservation and economical interests would have urged you to say something about breakfast.  To this day, I still don't quite understand it.  Crazy girl.  :)

So, with breakfast over, we decided to just pack up the car and go.  Well, when we got out to the car Lucy started heaving bags around and shoving things in the trunk and dropping other things on the ground.  I think that if she could have thrown my bag down into a deep, muddy ravine, she would have.  Ok, maybe not.  But clearly, she was not happy.  Before Lucy could finish taking out her fury on our poor, innocent luggage, I asked her to unhand all of the baggage and finished packing the trunk myself, during which the following exchange took place:

Me:  "Do you want me to drop you off at an airport?!"
Lucy:  "MAYBE!"

A moment of quiet

Lucy:  "I don't see why it's my fault that we missed breakfast!"
Me:  "Lucy, it's not your fault!  I'm not even mad about that! (Baffled, but not mad). RELAX!"

With all of our luggage in the car, I headed back in to the hotel lobby to check-out while Lucy stayed with the car.  As I was checking out, I noticed a few of the housekeeping staff eating in the breakfast area.  I didn't want to inconvenience anyone, but I thought, "Hey, I mean, if there is still food there, it wouldn't be too much trouble if I just like grabbed a bagel to go, right?"  So I asked the girl at the desk if I could quickly grab a bagel from the breakfast room.  She said sure.  So I hurried into the breakfast room to get a bagel and cream cheese for Lucy, hoping that perhaps this little gift would appease her and make up for missing breakfast and for everything else that had happened in the past 15 hours.

I got back to the car and said something apologetic like, "Here, I got a bagel for you...if you want it."  Lucy said no, she didn't want it.  I sort of wondered if she was going on a hunger strike to punish me, but then she kindly offered to put cream cheese on the bagel if I wanted to have it.  I said, I wasn't super hungry, but I might like to have half the bagel.  So while I drove to a nearby gas station, filled the car with gas and went to buy us our obligatory travel sodas, Lucy put cream cheese on half a bagel.  I thought maybe she would have the other half...but I think she just threw her half away.  Still, I think the offer alone had sort of mollified her.  When I got back in the car, she handed me my half of the bagel with cream cheese on it.  And that is why, to this day, the bagel is a symbolic peace offering, at least to Lucy and I.  "Here, I got a bagel for you" actually means "I'm sorry" and "Do you want cream cheese" means "I forgive you."

We drove ALL day that day.  Traffic wasn't too bad, and the weather gradually improved the farther west we got.  We raced through the rest of Arkansas, the entire state of Oklahoma, and into the panhandle of Texas.  We stopped for lunch in a little place called Shamrock, Texas where we took a short little detour on historic route 66 and snapped this picture:

After lunch we continued on toward Amarillo, Texas.  That's where I had figured we would stop for the night, but, when we got to Amarillo it was still kind of early and we were still feeling pretty good.  So we decided to push on through and see how much farther we could get that day.

We entered New Mexico and the speed limit went up by 10 mph.  That alone was enough to make me love New Mexico.  But of course, in addition to higher speed limits, New Mexico greeted us with bright blue, sunny skies.  Not a cloud to be seen anywhere.  It was magnificent.

As dusk approached, we started reading freeway signs for towns with some respectable lodging options.  We settled on a place called Tucumcari, New Mexico.  Since we weren't exactly sure how to pronounce Tucumcari, we took to calling it T-Town.  We checked into a Quality Inn right near the interstate and had dinner right there at the hotel.  It was pretty good!  I had enchiladas.  Did you have enchiladas also, Lucy?  I can't remember.  But I do remember that the glasses our sodas came in were ENORMOUS.  

After dinner, we wandered through the hotel grounds.  They had some fine playground equipment which we felt obliged to test.

Lucy on the blue horse swing. 

Me on the slide.  I just sat on it for appearances.  I didn't slide down.  

We were very excited to see that the hotel had a jacuzzi.  Lucy reminded me she had forgotten to bring a bathing suit, but quickly added that she was willing to wear her clothes in the jacuzzi.  So that is exactly what happened.  We sat and soaked in the hot tub for like twenty minutes, I in my bathing suit, Lucy in her clothes.  It was a nice end to a very long day of driving.

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.

Graceland!

September 21, 2011

On the morning of September 21, 2011, Lucy and I awoke in our hotel room in Memphis.  Well, I say awoke...but I don't think I ever actually went to sleep the night before.  As I mentioned previously, I kept having nightmares about my car getting stolen or vandalized or what have you.  Plus my pillow was really uncomfortable.  Lucy admitted that she had also been up most of the night, having the very same nightmares that I did.  Initially I had intended for us to stay at that hotel for two nights.  That way we could go to Graceland, go into downtown Memphis and walk around, maybe take a ride on a riverboat on the Mississippi and then come back to the hotel and crash.  But after our sleepless night I decided we should just go ahead and pack up, check-out and stay somewhere else that night.

So we packed our bags and strategically wedged them into the trunk of the car once again.  Then we headed to breakfast in the hotel lobby.  When we walked in to the breakfast area we noticed that we were probably the youngest people in there by about four decades.  There was only one exception - a boy who appeared to be about 13-years-old and slightly less than excited to be there with his older relatives.

It was actually a pretty great breakfast.  We made waffles.  And the whole time we were eating said waffles, we got to listen to Elvis music.  The hotel lobby was tuned in to the Elvis Radio on Sirius XM - it plays Elvis music live from Graceland 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  It's like a dream come true.  We also learned something new while listening to Elvis Radio.  They aired an old interview with someone who witnessed Elvis leaping out of a limo in order to breakup a fight.  The story made us laugh and reminded us why Elvis is one of the coolest guys ever.  Apparently, Elvis was wearing his DEA jumpsuit over his concert costume when he shot out of the limo door.  Personally, I sort of wish he had just been in his concert costume, with his cape flowing behind him when he came to the rescue.  But regardless, it is still a pretty awesome story.  You can read the entire interview with Bruce Fey here:  Elvis Presley is my hero.

So while we sat at breakfast, Lucy and I began discussing whether or not we should drive to the Graceland parking lot.  We had planned to walk, but based on our walk the previous night, we started to wonder if maybe that wasn't such a great idea.  We looked at all the other people in the breakfast area and thought, "Well hey, they are old and frail, and we are young and frail!  Let's watch them and see what they do.  If they drive, then we should follow their lead.  But if they can handle walking to Graceland, I'm sure we can too."  We sat at breakfast long enough to see a few groups of people head out of the hotel and begin the walk to Graceland.  That was good enough for us.  Besides, there were a pretty decent number of tourists making their way toward Graceland by that point.  Safety in numbers!  So we finished our waffles and walked to Graceland in a clump of other tourists.  We were glad we decided not to drive since, as it turns out, the parking lot for Graceland was directly across the street from our hotel anyway.  If we had driven we would have saved ourselves about 20 feet of walking.  

Anyway, Lucy and I purchased our tickets for Graceland at the ticket office.  We took the little shuttle that goes from the ticket office across the street to Graceland.  We're not lazy, we just didn't have a choice.  You have to take the shuttle.  But the shuttle drops you off right at the front doorstep.  It's such a lovely house.  Although it seem like quite a modest home for an international superstar by today's standards.  Can you imagine Elvis showing off Graceland on MTV Cribs?

My favorite room was probably the living room, mostly because of the stained glass peacock windows.  The jungle room was totally cool of course.  There is carpet on the ceiling of the jungle room – for better acoustics when Elvis was recording, of course.  The entertainment room in the basement was hilarious.  I mean, I get the neon blue and yellow, and the sparkly pillows, and the lightning bolt on the wall…but why the giant ceramic money?  Was Elvis watching the shopping channel at 2AM or something?  Although, even as I joke about the odd monkey knick-knack, I wouldn’t be surprised if I walked into Z Gallerie this weekend and saw an exact replica of that monkey for sale.  I guess it’s not the weirdest decoration in the whole world, but it’s still pretty weird.  Just look at its crazy, googly, eyes for a few minutes.  You’ll see what I mean.

Lucy in the living room at Graceland - notice the cool peacock windows. 

Me in the dining room at Graceland. 

The kitchen at Graceland.

The Jungle Room. 

 The basement with the sparkly pillows and the crazy monkey.

Anyway, there was a gargantuan room with all of the awards Elvis ever won.  Some of his most flashy and fabulous costumes were on display in the same room.  The costumes with capes reminded Lucy and I of the story we had heard that morning about Elvis rushing to the rescue of a young citizen in Wisconsin, superhero style.  I think my favorite costume is probably the one with the hug Aztec sun/calendar on the front.  Or maybe my favorite is the one with the sparkly black eagle on the front.  I don’t know, it’s hard to tell.  They’re all pretty cool.  And look at the belts!  So huge!  Plus, every time I see one of those costume belts I think of the story I read about Elvis giving Jack Lord, of Hawaii 5-0 fame, one of his belts.  What a cool guy.

Anyway, following our tour of Graceland, Lucy and I hopped on the little shuttle bus to take us back to the ticket office which, as you can imagine, was surrounded by a zillion stores all selling Elvis paraphernalia.  Lucy said something like “Do you want to get Graceland pajamas?”  And I said “Of course I do!!!”  So we began wandering through the shops looking for Graceland pajamas.  It didn’t take us long to find some.  We were busy deciding whether or not to get matching pajamas or complimentary pajamas when I caught a glimpse of a price tag and said “Whoa, what did that say?”  SIXTY DOLLARS.  Granted, that did include pajama tops AND bottoms but still…sixty dollars???  Lucy and I decided maybe we didn’t want Graceland pajamas after all.  So I bought a 3 dollar magnet.  And some postcards.

With Graceland magnet and postcards in hand, Lucy and I walked back to our hotel, hopped in the car and headed for downtown Memphis.  We parked at the visitors center where, of course, there was a gargantuan statue of Elvis.  I sort of wanted to hug his leg but I am extremely relieved that I saw the sign saying “Do not touch, alarm will sound” in front of the statue before I acted on that impulse.

If you feel inclined to hug this Elvis statue - resist.

From the visitor’s center, Lucy and I walked to Beale Street.  It was a nice walk, through a very nice area.  Rather different than our walk through “sketchy gas station alley” the night before.  I insisted that we eat lunch at the Hard Rock Café on Beale Street.  I love the Hard Rock Café.  I love it for being predictably delicious and for playing cool music and music videos while I eat my food.  This Hard Rock experience did not disappoint.  Once again, the food was delicious and the walls were absolutely plastered with Elvis paraphernalia. 

Me and yet another Elvis belt at the Hard Rock Cafe in Memphis, Tennessee. 

 Just look at all those Elvis pictures!  Hard Rock Cafe in Memphis.

 The Elvis statue on Beale Street - no alarms on this one, but there is a fence.

If only Lucy had a guitar she could be exactly like Elvis.

Beale Street in Memphis.  Do not be dissuaded from visiting by this terrible photo - it really is a cool place. I understand that the street looks much more awesome at night with all the neon lights on.  Lucy and I decided we didn't want to stick around for another 8 hours to see if this was true - but based on a cursory search of google images, I believe the rumors are true.

On our walk from Beale Street back to the car, we stopped at the place that does Steamboat Cruises.  It was still two hours before the next cruise and it was super hot outside and, as we looked at the boats, I thought to myself, "You know that paddle wheel boat at Disneyland is just as pretty as these ones...maybe even prettier.  Maybe we'll just go on the fake but pretty steamboat at Disneyland instead of waiting for this one."  I wondered if I would be sad later that I hadn't gone on a steamship ride on the Mississippi River when I had the chance...then I thought, "Eh, I'll live."  

There they are - the steamships with paddle wheels. 

So, having decided we didn't need to wait around for a steamship cruise, Lucy and I turned our sights to the bridge over the Mississippi River.  I was actually pretty excited about crossing the Mississippi River.  I mean, I have flown over the Mississippi in an airplane a bunch of times (and admittedly it looks pretty cool from way up in the sky) but it seemed like it would be kind of exciting to cross the Mississippi up close and personal.  And it was.  It's such an enormous river.  Very big and very muddy, just as I had always imagined it.

Section of the I-40 bridge (a.k.a. the Hernando de Soto Bridge) over the Mississippi.

And so, after driving across the Interstate 40 Hernando de Soto Bridge over the Mississippi River, we entered the state of Arkansas.

Arriving in Memphis, Tennessee

September 20, 2011

Lucy and I rolled into Memphis just before sunset.  We checked into the Days Inn at Graceland.  It was a pretty cool hotel - tons of Elvis paraphernalia.  And the pool was shaped like a guitar!

Me and some Elvis pictures (including one of my favorite pics of Elvis in Hawaii - it's on the left). 

Lucy showing off the pool.  We got to dip our feet in but, sadly, didn't have time to go for a proper swim.  Just as well since Lucy apparently forgot to pack her swimsuit.

After getting settled we decided we just wanted something quick for dinner and, since we spent nearly all day in the car, we decided we'd walk to some place nearby.  Well, we stepped out onto the street in front of the hotel and saw a sign for a McDonald's only half a mile away.  I said, hey that's close, that'll do.  So we turned right and started off. 

About 100 feet from the hotel the sidewalk ended.  After that it was all asphalt and gravel sporadically interspersed by driveways.  We walked by like 4 gas stations and a tire store with groups of people loitering at each one.  There was some catcalling and whistling.  I told Lucy not to look too friendly because it would only encourage them.  Of course you can't look mean either because that would just irritate them.  And whatever you do, don't look nervous because they can smell fear and it makes them circle like sharks.  Lucy started to panic a little bit (it was probably my helpful instructions that caused the panic more than anything else) and I started wishing we had just driven the half mile to McDonald's.  But by then we were closer to McDonald's than the hotel - so I told Lucy we should just press on, we were nearly there anyway.

Then a policeman flagged us down.  He asked Lucy and I where we were headed.  We said we were going to the McDonald's across the street.  I asked if we were ok walking.  The policeman said "Well, yeah, you're ok...I know you must be here for Graceland...just don't go wandering too far after dark."  We thanked him and tripled our walking speed so we could get our food and get back to the hotel by dark.  We can only assume that Memphis has a pretty serious vampire problem. 

As it happened there was a huge wreck near McDonald's.  A semi-truck had hit some low-hanging power lines.  They had like 7 cop cars on the scene.  They had to stop and divert a lot of traffic because the live powerlines were lying across the road.  I told Lucy that, aside from the downed powerlines and the risk of electrocution, I felt very safe.  After all, if we needed any assistance, there were at least 14 cops who could respond to our call within 3 seconds. 

Lucy and I reached McDonald's and ordered our food to go.  Then we raced back to the hotel.  As the sun got lower and lower, we walked faster and faster.  We may have even been running the last little bit.  But, you know...we didn't want our food to get cold.  And we didn't want to get killed either. 

Lucy and I were sort of high strung the rest of the night.  I personally didn't get a wink of sleep.  I kept having nightmares about my car getting stolen.  Of course it didn't get stolen, everything was just fine.  But we did learn a valuable lesson - if you want McDonald's in Memphis near Graceland,  you drive there.  Who knew Elvis lived in such a rough town?

Tennessee & The Pinson Mounds

Hey Lucy,

Yes, you're right.  I admit it - it is mildly disgraceful that we never finished blogging about our road trip.  It's high time we finished it.  So here it is...Tennessee.

September 20, 2011

We woke up in Asheville and had a decent little breakfast courtesy of the Country Inn and Suites.  After that we packed up our bags, checked out of the hotel and headed to the car.  We got all of our bags wedged into their designated places in the trunk - we got faster at reloading the trunk each day.  By the end we had it down to a science. 

It was gray and cloudy out that morning and it had obviously rained during the night so I decided we should recoat all of the windows with Rain-X before we headed out.  I LOVE Rain-X.  It is amazing.  I grew to love it even more after Jiffy Lube replaced my old windshielf wipers with the WORST wiper blades ever manufactured on earth.  Granted, Jiffy Lube HAD given me the option to buy the more expensive wiper blades...but I said no, thanks I will take the cheaper ones. I just didn't realize that "cheaper" meant "will not work at all."  Seriously, my five-year-old wiper blades that they replaced were better than the new ones that they gave me.  The new ones just sort of smeared the water around and made it even harder to see than it was before.  It would probably have been safer for me to roll down my window and stick my head outside to see, than it would have been for me to use those wiper blades.  However, in the interest of keeping my face and the interior of my car dry, I decided to keep the windows rolled up and just used Rain-X on my windows.  Then we didn't need to use the windshield wipers so much because the raindrops just leapt right off of the windshield.

We left Asheville and headed toward Tennessee.  We got to drive through the Great Smoky Mountains.  It's MUCH more pleasant to drive through the mountains during the day.  They really were beautiful.  They were foggy and smoky and misty just like I hoped they would be.  Very pretty.  Lucy, did any of your pictures from the mountains turn out?  If so, be sure and post a few.  If not, well, we'll always have google images to remind us of our trip.

Eventually we ended up on I-40 and started racing through the state of Tennessee.  I have to say, it was a really, really beautiful drive.  There were a lot of cool rock formations along the road and tons and tons of trees.  Growing up in California for the most part, it is still very exciting for me to see so many trees all at once, especially when they have leaves on them.

We passed several billboards that tried to lure us to Pigeon Forge, TN to see the Titanic Museum.  Tempting.  Very tempting.  But we resisted and drove on to Nashville.  Driving through Nashville was insane.  We had to go through like seven interchanges just to stay on I-40.  The GPS kept saying things like "Stay left in the right lane, stay left in the left lane, stay right in the left lane, keep right, merge left."  Sometimes I'd think "WHAT did that just say?!"  But there is no time to doubt the word of the GPS.  You just do what it says and hope that you don't end up driving off of an unfinished freeway ramp that is still under construction.  Fortunately, the GPS led us aright.  We made it through an excessive amount of interchanges, stayed an I-40 and continued our westward advance.

It poured rain on us most of the afternoon.  Really poured.  Thank goodness we had put Rain-X on the windows.  Worse than the rain though, were the semi-trucks.  The trucks threw more water on the windshield than the rain clouds did.  For the most part it was fine but there was this one five-minute segment of time that I have had nightmares about since.  A truck in the right lane pulled in front of us in order to pass two slower trucks that were in the right lane.  We slowed down substantially to accommodate the truck in front of us.  Then, another truck from the right lane pulled in right behind us.  Reeeeeeally close.  The reason I NEVER cut off a truck is because I know those things have a really hard time stopping and I don't want to end up crushed.  So why a semi-truck would ride anyone's bumper is beyond me. 

So there we were, with a huge truck in front of us and another huge truck on our rear bumper AND two trucks on the right side.  No trucks on the left side of us thankfully - just a huge gully.  But we were boxed in by trucks in the pouring rain.  I kept waiting for one of them to jack-knife or just drive over the top of us or something.  I told Lucy "I have nightmares like this!  This is what happens to bad people when they die!!!"  It seemed to drag on forever but at long last, the truck in front of us managed to pass the two trucks on the right and he merged back into the right lane.  We took off as fast (and responsibly) as we could. 

At about 4:30PM we reached the Pinson Mounds State Archaelogical Park in Tennessee.  The Pinson Mounds were built between 1-500 A.D. (or C.E. if you prefer).  It's the largest grouping of mounds in America from that time period and Saul's Mound, the mound at the center of the Pinson complex, is the second highest prehistoric mound in the United States.  Anyway, I was pretty excited to go there and to see all these structures and walls and mounds and stuff.  We were also rather relieved that the rain let up so we could walk around without getting soaked. 

When we arrived at the park the museum had already closed but the park was open until sunset.  Since it was still cloudy we weren't really sure how much longer we had until sunset, but figured we had oh maybe another hour or so.  We parked, hopped out of the car and looked for a map of the different trails we could follow.  While we stood there reading the map we started thinking "Hmmm, it's sort of eerie here with no one else around, isn't it?  It feels a little isolated."  I mean, there were cars in the parking lot, but we didn't see anybody else.  And it was soooooooooo quiet.  We decided maybe we didn't want to go hiking to the farthest corners of the park, maybe we should stay on the trails nearest the car.  So we picked the trail to Saul's Mound, the mound at the center of the park.  Since it is the tallest mound in the park we thought, "Well hey, maybe if we hike to the top of Saul's Mound we will be able to see the rest of the park from there.  Then we won't have to go hiking around to see the other mounds."

We started on the trail to Saul's Mound.  It really wasn't very far at all.  You could see it from the parking lot.  On the way there, though, we ran into a deer.  Figuratively, of course.  I mean we didn't REALLY run into it.  We just saw it and stopped a moment while it stared us down.  Then it walked off and we walked on.  Lucy and I started getting more and more anxious about how dead quiet and isolated the park felt.  We started talking about all the Law and Order and Criminal Minds episodes where people get murdered in parks.  Seriously, in a park like that, what chance do you have?  There's no cell phone reception.  If you scream, no one will hear you and come to help because no one but you and the murderer are there.  I know what you're thinking - if Lucy and I were both there then it would be two against one in a fight.  But if you new Lucy and I, you would know that that probably isn't much of an advantage.  I'm not sure that either of us would be much help in a fight.  Unless, of course, it was a dance fight.  Then we would be very formidable opponents.  But neither of us are exactly known for our great physical strength.

We reached Saul's Mound and walked up like a million stairs to get to the top.  I think I walked through a few spider webs which meant I would start waving my hands around in the air and trying to pull invisible sticky threads off of my face.  I was happy that none of the spider webs seemed to have spiders attached.  We eventually made it to the top of Saul's Mound.  It was pretty cool.  Apparently the corners of the mound are oriented to the four "cardinal directions." In laymen's terms, the corners point North, East, South and West.  That's what I like to see: some real thought prior to construction.  Sadly, our plan to see the whole park from the top of Saul's Mound was foiled by the trees.  The trees were lovely of course but they blocked our view of everything else.

We walked back down the stairs and didn't have to worry about spider webs since I had already cleared them all on the way up.  At the foot of the stairs we started toying with the idea of hiking around a bit more to see a few more mounds.  But then we would hear a rustle in the trees and think "What was that?  Did you hear that?  Was that a squirrel?  Or was that a serial killer?"  So we decided maybe we wouldn't go hiking off into the far reaches of the park by ourselves at dusk.  Instead we headed back toward the parking lot.  Before we got back in the car though we decided to make the stop more worthwhile by playing on a nearby swingset for a little bit.  THEN we got back in the car and headed toward Memphis.

Part of me was very disappointed when we left Pinson.  I had had such high expectations and we really didn't get to see what I had wanted to see.  I felt like maybe it was a wasted stop.  I think I even told Lucy I was super disappointed in that stop and maybe we shouldn't have stopped at all.  About twenty minutes later I said "No, you know what?  I'm glad we stopped.  Every trip needs a disappointing stop."  But if there is one thing that we really learned from that stop, it's that Lucy and I really need to cut back on the Law and Order and Criminal Minds reruns.  We're getting far too paranoid.

 Lucy at the top of Saul's Mound.  Look at the glee on that face.

 The stairs up to Saul's Mound (now completely free of spider webs).

 The foot of Saul's Mound.  It doesn't look that tall in this picture, but it really is tall, I swear.  Maybe if Lucy didn't take pictures CROOKED you could see how tall it was.  :)

 Me on the swings.

Lucy on the monkey bars. 

Too Long Clanky...Too Long

Gigi,

It has been WAAAAY too long dear sister. And we never finished our trip! I think that after this post, I will try to remember what came next on the trip…but you know how my memory can be. Be prepared to correct my blips and mistakes.

This week has been quite exciting. Okay, so not really until tonight. Mostly the week was me doing homework and studying as all college students should. Mother said that you once took 21 credits, and I applaud you. I am only taking 17 credits and I am struggling keeping up. That may also have something to do with the fact that none of them are fun classes and are all for my major, but still. On Monday, I FINALLY got a job…and guess what it is…yep you guessed it. I am a janitor at the school. Early Morning Janitor, which I have to say, is the best kind. 3 am to 7 am in the morning I am vacuuming, sweeping and scrubbing rooms and toilets. They are so clean. SO clean, in fact, that you can even eat off of them. Although I would never recommend it. I think I am the only one in the building that takes pride in their work, but I actually like doing a good job. I worked in a different building last Spring and we cleaned everything VERY thorough. In my current building, the Snow, people hardly clean at all. It’s kind of sad.

This reminds me of a story. Do you remember when I was in 3^rd grade and everyone in my class was going around and saying what they wanted to be when they grew up? I think some of the responses were fireman, policeman, a mother, a surgeon. Then it was my turn. I piped up nice and loud “A MAID” and everyone looked at me and then laughed. Even the teacher. So humiliating. But I do believe that is the reason I like cleaning so much.

And that pretty much was my week, which brings us to today. I was asked to volunteer for a sleigh ride trip at 4:30pm. I agreed and showed up at 4 for instruction. The leader shows up, hands me the liability forms which everyone has to sign and tells me to read it to everyone when they arrive. The forms basically say that you can’t sue BYU-Idaho and you could twist your ankle or simply die on this trip and that is expected. Then the leader, Lex, said he had to go pick up the van and the food, and he would be back shortly. I said alrighty, how hard can it be to keep people busy for 5 minutes…

4:30 rolls around and I decide to start the reading of the liability form.  As the participants were reading it out loud (I wasn’t going to read it all…it’s an entire page of legal jargon, so I made them do it!) I started laughing as it said everything that could possibly happen to the participants. I couldn’t help it. I will have to find it and type it up for you some time. It really is funny. Everyone finishes and then it gets quiet…I ask everyone where they are from, everyone answers, and then again quiet. Thankfully they were all coupled up so they started talking to themselves. Bullet dodged.

4:40 rolls around…4:45…4:50, and FINALLY he shows up with the van. He starts checking people in on the computer and they start piling into the van. It turns out we have 12 people…we have a five passenger van. Strike 2. I run over to Lex and asked what to do and he says, well I guess you get to drive. Two problems. For starter I did not have my license on me…and second, I don’t have permission from the school to drive. I haven’t passed the exam yet. But He said he would take responsibility, and apparently I haven’t learned yet to make sure I get it in writing, but I accepted the risk. We arrive…at 5:15 after getting lost twice (I learned to bring my own map from now on) and pull in. I learn shortly after this that I will be on the sleigh ride. With my thin jacket and little tennis shoes, I hop on and begin to freeze.

So this “sleigh” is not really a sleigh at all. It was more of a plank of wood on wheels with hay bales pulled by two horses.  It was…interesting. And cold. And cold. Did I mention it was cold? While we are on the sleigh ride, the driver wants us to get up and cut the rope on the bales of hay and shove them off the sleigh to feed all the animals. Somewhere in this long process I lost my hat. My favorite hat. Well, one of my favorites. The grey one I got for Christmas. I suppose I could just go down to target to replace it-oh wait, there is no target here. J Gotta Love Rexburg, Idaho! But all in all a great trip around on the sleigh. I don’t think anyone in that crew will do it again though.

We start to drive back and I turn around this corner and a CAT runs out right in front of my car! Ugh stupid cats! It was the cutest little thing I have ever seen too. So fluffy because it is so cold here in the winter. It is so lucky I was going like 3 miles an hour and was able to stop quickly. Because that would have ruined my day for sure.

I will be leading trips like this all the time, so I am sure that there will be amazing stories coming. 

Church is going to start soon…well okay, I don’t have church till 1:50…but I am thinking about taking a nap before then.

Love you dearest sister

Little Lucy

The Biltmore

We're home!  We had a GREAT time driving across the country.  It was awesome and wonderful and amazing and thrilling and magical and exhausting and we are so glad it's over!  We've actually been home for three weeks now, but I think we have just now fully recovered from our trip.  :)

So where were we...ah yes, Natural Bridge, VA.  After a very awesome day in Natural Bridge, we headed for Asheville, North Carolina.  It was about a four hour drive and after four hours driving that morning and a long day in Natural Bridge...we were already pretty tired.  So it felt like a VERY long drive to Asheville.  We got excited when we got near the Virginia state line.  Lucy got her camera out to take a picture of the state sign.  As we passed it we read "Welcome to Tennessee!" Wait, what?  I thought we were entering North Carolina...so that was a little bit of a surprise.  Turns out our GPS, which we decided to name Gabriella Priscilla Smithington (Gabby for short), just decided to send us through a corner of Tennessee on our way into North Carolina. 

Shortly after entering Tennessee, it got dark.  Really dark.  I started saying "Why aren't there any lights out here?!"  And then the road suddenly veered up at a 45 degree angle.  Apparently we were driving through a mountain range, but it was hard to tell since I couldn't see ANYTHING around me.  I suspect we were driving through the Great Smokey Mountains, but again, hard to tell when everything is pitch black.  Don't get me wrong, I have great headlights, but it is SERIOUSLY dark out there.  And I couldn't use my brights because of all the cars coming the other way.  Of course there were very few people on our side of the road...don't know why we were the only ones who wanted to go that way.  Another car did show up near us after a while though.  And then it almost smashed into us.  I mean seriously, there are almost no other cars in the road and the guy manages to nearly hit us when he changes lanes.  What a bozo.  I don't know if he was drunk or texting or drunk-texting or just falling asleep.  But I was mad.

So FINALLY we re-entered civilization.  We were so happy to see lights again.  We pulled into the parking lot of our hotel and I turned off the car.  We were SO relieved to be alive and to be DONE driving for the day.  I started laughing.  Lucy started crying.  We were just very relieved. 

The next day was a great day.  We went to visit the Biltmore!  It was built by George Washington Vanderbilt when he was 33 years old.  He was single at the time and apparently, some people speculated that with an estate the size of the Biltmore, George would become a recluse and never marry.  But eventually he did marry a woman named Edith.  I can only hope that there is a 33-year-old bachelor with a large estate who wants to marry me. 

 The Biltmore!

 Lucy and her Biltmore ticket.  Just after this picture, we headed down the stairs and into the front garden.  On our way down the long shallow steps that were only an inch or two high each, I said, "Oh Lucy, when I was in Rome someone told me that steps like these are for-" and Lucy said "Strollers."  I said, "No...horses."  And then we just laughed.  Strollers?  Really?  Where did that come from?  :)

 Lucy and the lion guarding the entrance.  Totally checking her out.

A very stately porch light.

The Biltmore was amazing.  It's HUGE of course, and so lavishly decorated.  I was sad we weren't permitted to take pictures indoors, but I guess the pictures wouldn't have done it justice anyway.  And now, here are a few random/interesting facts that Lucy and I learned on our audio tour of the Biltmore:

1) The dining hall was seriously enormous.  George had flags for all of the 13 original colonies AND a replica of the flag flown by Christopher Columbus on his voyage to America all displayed in the dining room.  And there was an organ in the dining room.  A full on organ with pipes and everything.  Apparently Mr. Vanderbilt was very fond of the opera.

2)  In the breakfast room, Mr. Vanderbilt displayed some Renoir paintings.  Renoir wasn't even famous at the time Vanderbilt bought the paintings...he mostly just bought them to support new artists.  Good call.

3)  There was one room just off to the left of the entrance hall that was left incomplete, it was never furnished or decorated when George Vanderbilt was alive.  It is now the music room.  However, when America entered WWII, the National Gallery in Washington DC approached the Vanderbilts and asked if they would be willing to store the Gallery's artwork at the Biltmore.  So throughout the war, a large portion of the national gallery's collection was stored in the unfinished music room at the Biltmore!

4)  The library was AWESOME.  George Vanderbilt had something like 23,000 books.  Apparently he spoke several foreign languages and was able to read 4 foreign languages.  And he loved reading.  I think only 12,000 or so of his books or on display in the library.  Many of the others are in "the archives" or displayed in other portions of the house.  But seriously, the library was wall to wall books.  Also in the library, Napoleon Bonaparte's chess set.  The ACTUAL set that Napoleon played while exiled in St. Helena.  So crazy.

There were loads and loads of other rooms.  The bedrooms were gorgeous and the servants rooms and kitchens were super interesting.  We loved the gymnasium and pool areas.  Although...I have to say, William Randolph Hearst had way prettier pools at Hearst Castle...cool mosaics and porticoes and stuff.  The one at the Biltmore was a more practical pool swimming pool.  But in its defense, it had lights UNDER the water back when electricity was kind of a new-fangled thing.  I'm glad no one was electrocuted.

After we completed our audio tour of the house, Lucy and I had lunch at the Stables Cafe.  They had just renovated the former stables and made it a restaurant.  So that was kind of cool.  We had warm pimiento cheese which was SO good and I had the Carolina BBQ.  Lucy had....the BBQ hamburger, right Lucy?  I can't remember now.  Anyway, it was all quite delicious.  When we finished lunch we had way too much fun shopping.

Next we headed to the Biltmore Gardens.  Fortunately we were permitted to take pictures in the gardens.  And so we did.  And here they are.

 Inside the greenhouse.

 Lucy, inside the greenhouse.

 Me on a bench that may have been meant for children.

 A butterfly!

 A striped hibiscus - I'd never seen one before.  It was gorgeous.

 Me in a lattice frame - there was some other..."poses"  but I have chosen not to post those.  :)

 Pretty roses.

 Close up of the pretty roses.

 You can't really tell from this picture at all, but the flowers were in the shape of a dragonfly.  maybe you can only tell from the sky.

 Lucy and a...zinnia...or something. I'm actually really not sure what that flower is.

 Lucy and the greenhouse exterior.

 Me and the greenhouse exterior.

 Lucy in the greenhouse.

 Me in the greenhouse.  And that is how I got a big green moss smudge on my jeans.

And that concludes our wonderful trip to the Biltmore.  We had a grand time.  At the end of the day we went back to our hotel and relaxed.  We were very relieved that we didn't have a long drive ahead of us that night.