July 12, 2012

July 12, 2012

Wild Bill had the “big box” on the road at 6:50.  That’s not unusual for him.  Brent was riding shotgun.  If he has a choice, he usually isn’t up at that hour.  The kids were still asleep.  As for Willie, he was being a speed bump, and doing a good job of it.  

As for me, I was sitting at the table pecking away at my journal as we head east out of Springfield.  Two and a half hours later we honked and yahooed our way into Arkansas.  I’m sorry to say, the roads immediately deteriorated.

At Hardy the road improved somewhat.  We went through the small town of Imboden.  Sounds like a modern day medicine, doesn’t it? 

At Jonesboro, we pulled into Sam’s Club.  While Bill filled the MH tank with diesel, the rest of us went inside to “fill our tanks” with hot dogs and pizza.  I ordered for Bill, but it was a long time before he came in.  He said while he was pumping the diesel, he made the mistake of leaving the door open.  The screen was closed and Willie was looking out.  People kept coming over to the MH to see “that big, beautiful dog.”  Bill said he almost never got away!

Not long before we crossed into Tennessee it started to rain.  We crossed the Mississippi River at Memphis (Honk, honk! Yahoo!) on I-55.  About 15 minutes later we crossed into Mississippi (ditto).  Brent said that time it sounded like a “Sippi” horn.

We had dark skies and rain all the way back to Brandon.  In spite of that, and the fact that we went 490 miles today, Bill feels that we made good time.

We had a good time on our trip.  We were gone 25 days.  It was well worth it to have everyone together.