Day 1

Hello from Arkansas!

Well, nothing can stand in our way from tearing up the road to California, except multiple tornadoes and golf-ball sized hail.

We left Athens at 9:04 am, and you would think that we were setting up permanent residence in San Francisco by the amount of stuff we packed into my car.


We drove in five different states today: Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Despite the fact we drove over 600 miles, every time I looked out the window I thought, "Wow, that looks like south Georgia." But we aren't worried. Tomorrow me and Bryan will see country unlike anything we've known before - flat Texas and the New Mexico desert. Chris says Texas will be boring, but he is very excited about Albuquerque.

Highlights of the day:
Chris
At 1:50 pm, we drove over a smallish, modest, relatively unimpressive river. Chris, riding in the back seat, suddenly sat up straight and said in a half excited-half nervous voice, "Is that the Mississippi River?!"
It was the Tenn-Tom. Bryan and I almost busted a gut laughing so hard.

Memphis
We drove into Memphis around 3:40 pm.

I think it was a nice change because we had been in the car all day, and hadn't really seen anything spectacular. But Memphis was having "Memphis in May," which is basically a music-food-culture festival. Beale Street was blocked off and there were a lot of people walking around, having a good time. We watched a kid do 5 back flips (shedding his shirt between the second and third flip), and then his dad asked us to pay a dollar each for being exposed to such greatness. Hahaha. We said something about being poor college students and kept walking.
Memphis is an awesome town. The smell of ribs made it that much harder to leave.


So, tonight, we have stopped in Conway, Arkansas (a little bit sooner than we had planned) because there is some wicked weather coming our way. There are two cells coming out of Oklahoma right now that have already created several tornadoes, so we decided not to push our luck.

We're gonna hit the road early in the morning so we can make up some time. Personally, I can't wait to see the desert. Hopefully I'll have a chance to post something at some point tomorrow, but don't worry if it's sometime Wednesday before I get something posted.

Over and out!