A Tale of Two Highways

April 24, 2008
Horn Lake, MS

“It was the best of roads; it was the worst of roads”. Where else can I go with this? We spent today following storms through Oklahoma and across Arkansas. I-40 is a road with a Jekyll & Hyde “personality”. Parts of it were smooth as silk, and other parts were some of the worst road we’ve been on in several years. Since most highway maintenance in these parts in handled by the individual counties, whenever we saw a “county line” sign, we knew we were in for a change. The section that goes right through Oklahoma City was probably the worst. It’s amazing that the people responsible for these roads can actually keep their jobs. They should be embarrassed, and required to drive these roads every day…

In any event, we made it to Memphis (actually just south of the city, across the Mississippi line) without having the coach fall apart. In addition, we managed to avoid the severe storms that were impacting the Midwest for the last two days. Today, we followed two lines of storms traveling east through Little Rock and Memphis. We had rain most of the day, but stayed behind the lightning and strong winds for the most part.

When we got to the east of Little Rock, we started seeing the effects of all the rain this area’s had recently. Many creeks and streams were over their banks and/or running very quickly. By the time we got close to the Mississippi River flood plain, there was water everywhere. Flooding in this area is essentially an annual occurrence, so it’s not unexpected but still quite a spectacle.

We arrived at the chosen RV park about 3½ hours behind schedule, not bad for a 1,400+ mile trip, primarily because we slowed up yesterday because of the weather. We set up and took the opportunity to relax a bit after a few days on the road. Tomorrow, we’ll hit the town for some “que”!