Thursday February 3, 2011

Today’s Trip

Denmark, Tennessee, to Texarkana, Arkansas

Thursday, February 3

We pulled out of the travel plaza about 5:45 a.m. – before I should have been taking pictures without a flash. I like to have fun with no-flash and traffic lights when it is dark.

These crosses near Memphis looked pretty in the early morning light.

The Mississippi River is the border between Tennessee and Arkansas.

Cerwin and I don’t think we were ever in Arkansas.

The Mississippi

The temperature was twenty-two degrees at this point.

We have gone through four or five weigh stations so far. Most are quite easy – as you just drive through slowly. At this one we had to stop on the scales, but of course a mobile chapel is not overweight.

Arkansas is very flat on Route I-40.

Our breakfast stop. I think Love’s is a neat name for a travel plaza.

The view from where we parked.

The driver to my immediate right (not in photo) was from Fries, Virginia. I told him that the name on his truck reminded me of our vacation last summer when we went to the Fiddlers Competition in Fries. He said he and his wife went to Peach Bottom, Pennsylvania, on their vacation – to visit friends. So we just exchanged states for our vacations.

The remains of a cotton crop from last summer.

We went through a snow flurry about 9:00 a.m. Central Time

For some reason this reminded me of the many people who carry oversized spiritual and emotional loads – not realizing that Jesus came to help us carry the load.

A nice car-carrier with a full load of nice cars.

Texarkana here we come!

There are lots of low lands and swampy areas in this area.

I find them quite pretty.

Crossing the Arkansas River as we traveled south of Little Rock.

The barge from another view.

We saw miles and miles of this kind of scenery.

This is when I played a long game of Skip-Bo on my computer. I like this game for traveling, because it is not timed (it just waits until I get back to it), the cards are large, and I have computer competitors.

The only problem today was that there were a lot of rough stretches of road – making it difficult to always get the card where it belonged. That wasn’t usually a problem, because the card just went back to where it had been in my deck – unless it was a Skip-Bo. There were a few times when the Skip-Bo went to the incorrect pile, messing up my plan.

We haven’t seen many animals on this trip – the reason I noticed this steer.

A short time later there was a horse close to the road.

I expect this farm equipment looked very nice in its day.

This sweet Mustang was just ahead of us as we went into the Flying J travel plaza late this afternoon.

Cerwin chose this as our final destination for today so we don’t arrive in Dallas at night. Also, we are scheduled to be there at noon tomorrow.

The view from our parking spot. This Trucker’s Chapel is the outreach of another ministry. Good for them! The red building behind them is an Adult Book Store (which I didn’t find necessary to photograph). Sadly, I expect more drivers go there than to the chapel.

The fence is a divider between counties.

The truck wash is also on the other side of the fence. The chapel needs a bath, but Cerwin plans to wait until we are closer to our destination.

~~~

We are enjoying a leisurely evening in Denny’s Restaurant – a section of the Flying J. Because the only part of the restaurant that has outlets is a small room to the side of the main dining area, we have an area to ourselves. Cerwin is watching Fox News while I work (or play) on my computer.