Our View From The Road

Sharing where we've been and what we've seen

Tag: AR

Arkansas

  • Day 42: Russellville

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    We awake in Russellville. Tonight we sleep in Russellville. Huh? What gives?

    This morning we started in Russellville, AR. Tonight we are about 450miles further towards home and are staying in Russellville, KY. It wasn’t planned this way however.

    The day started fairly normally and after breakfast we rejoined I-40E towards Memphis, TN.

    Drive to Memphis, TN
    Crossing the Mississippi River

    Once past Memphis we head towards Nashville, TN stopping to do a little shopping in Jackson, TN and have lunch. Rejoining the I-40E the traffic increases as we get closer to Nashville. I then notice that the Waze GPS app is re-routing us because of traffic issues in Nashville. It does this a few times and then Barb notices that on Google maps in the city of Nashville traffic is a mess! Time to divert.

    From Tennessee into Kentucky

    Barb determines a route cross-country toward our intended destination, Bowling Green, KY. I take the next exit and avoid the traffic. Barb then tells me that we could actually stop for the night in a town with the same name as where we started, Russellville, KY.

    And so here we, ‘back where we started’ as it were. Ha ha ha.

    Tomorrow, we head North. We’ll leave Kentucky and head into Indiana. See you there.

  • Day 41: The start of our drive home

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    So here we are, the beginning of the end. Today we begin our drive towards Ontario & home. It will take a few days, but compared to the past few weeks our pace will seem meteoric as our goal is to cover distance and not dawdle about.

    The sunrise was beautiful as we watched through the Mesquite trees while eating breakfast. We packed up the van and headed out. The Bisons politely congregated near the entrance to the park allowing us to take some final pictures.

    Bye Bye Bison

    We headed North across country towards the I-40E. This route had us driving through some small towns that for the most part are now almost ghost towns as most of the Main Street stores are sadly vacant and boarded up. One of the towns, Memphis, TX has all of its downtown streets paved with cobblestones which have it a really charming feeling, that is until you see all of the vacant shops. Sad.

    North Texas grasslands

    Once on the I-40E we quickly cross into Oklahoma. Near Hydro, OK we stop to look at our last Route 66 site, Lucille’s gas station was operated by Lucille Hamons from 1941 until her death on August 18, 2000, the site was added to the US National Register of Historic Places in 1997.

    Lucille’s gas station

    We are accompanied by strong crosswinds as we cross Oklahoma; however, the grasslands slowly disappear and by Oklahoma City many more trees can be seen including now large leaf deciduous trees and larger conifers. Large-scale farming has been replaced by smaller farms interspersed throughout the wooded hillsides. By the time we get to the Arkansas state line, the farms have mostly disappeared (as have the winds) and now the scenery is forested hillsides amongst the lakes and waterways that will become the Ozarks.

    Our View From The Road

    After almost 9hrs on the road, we pull off at Russellville, AR and pull into the Cracker Barrel parking lot where we will have dinner and spend the night.