Nashville to Oklahoma City

The longest day of driving of the entire trip meant getting an early start from Nashville. Janis had coffee and coffee cake for Mom and I before we made way westward around 7:20 AM CDT. Thanks so much to Janis for taking care of us after our first day on the road, and for showing us all around Nashville! I drove the first half of the day, the first leg of which was a three-hour jaunt down to Memphis on the mighty Mississippi. I-40 was relatively clear – thank goodness for Sunday travel – and the ride was pleasant. The Cumberland Plateau slowly melted away into the Mississippi River floodplains as we circumnavigated downtown Memphis (saw the pyramid-shaped building!) and crossed over into Arkansas. I was pretty impressed with the Mississippi, having never seen it before, though apparently it’s much more impressive farther downstream.

The drive through Arkansas really wasn’t anything to write home about, though some strange things did happen along the way. We stopped for gas in Palestine, Arkansas (yes, you read that correctly) where the gas pumps were covered in neon green grasshoppers – it was some sort of localized swarm (5th photo below) in the area! They were harmless, though, and we were quickly back on the way to Little Rock. The Arkansas countryside looked very similar to what you see on I-40 in eastern North Carolina: FLAT, mostly forests, some farmland, with a few larger communities spread along the interstate. Boring, except I did see my first armadillo road kill somewhere east of Little Rock. As Janis had warned us, the roads were not the best to drive on – with the Blazer as loaded down as it is the shock absorbers don’t have much room to give when going over bumps! We made it to Little Rock by about 12:30 PM CDT, though I have to say I was largely unimpressed with what I saw from the highway. That quickly changed as we continued to head west, as the flat plain west of the Mississippi gave way to some of the foothills of the Ozarks, which are the mountains in northwestern Arkansas. We made a brief pit stop to grab a sandwich and switch up drivers around 1:30 PM in Morrilton.

The country was especially beautiful west of Russellville as I-40 roughly paralleled Lake Dardanelle, which weaves through some of the larger hills in the area. We saw the single nuclear reactor in Arkansas near London (crazy place names abound in this place), stopped at a less-than-impressive “Scenic Overlook” (see the 6th photo below), and kept heading for Oklahoma!

Eastern Oklahoma was equally as unimpressive as eastern Arkansas (I’m not trying to bash, just providing trip commentary), though we did see some oil pumps, lots of cattle, and some also-poor roads. We passed through Checotah, OK, home of American Idol winner Carrie Underwood – there was a sign on the interstate otherwise I would never have known! There was not much that could stop us, though, as we really just wanted to get to Oklahoma City to get out of the car. We finally made it around 5:45 PM CDT, heading first to the hotel to check in (and so I could secure my bike to the Blazer via MasterLock), then to Wal-mart to pick up a few things. We got back into the hotel and have been lying low ever since!

Today was a good day despite the length of the drive (like I mentioned, the longest single day at about 10 hours of drive time), but I’m really looking forward to heading even farther west tomorrow. Northern Texas and New Mexico are going to be real changes in scenery as we push out into the desert around midday or early afternoon. We should get into Albuquerque in enough time to check out some of the city before crashing for the night!

That’s all for now – goodnight from OKC!

Song of the Day: "Death and All His Friends (Live)" by Coldplay
Distance Driven Today: 697 miles
Total Distance Driven: 1,245 miles
Distance to Go: 1,470 miles