I knew things were going to be exciting, with so many milestones wrapped up in one day. The first of these was hitting Central Time after about half an hour on the road (no picture, I was too tired and slow). My parents and I decided to make it a longer day since we had just gained an hour, so we changed our ending campground to North Little Rock, about halfway through Arkansas. The rest of the morning on the road was pretty unevenful until...
A bit of a cloudburst happened while working out way through the beautiful nothingness before we came to Nashville. Luckily it only lasted a few minutes and we didn't need to pull over or anything. I reminded my mom that tornadoes were not common in TN and there was no need to worry.
Sadly, there are no pictures of Nashville. Thanks to a convoluted highway system and some quick changes, I was busy calling out directions and looking frantically over roadmaps during that. However the road to Memphis was quite clear and picturesque, though the sky wasn't:
And we even saw a solar farm closer to the city, though sadly underutilized on that day:
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to grab a picture of the highway exit for the town nearest our Official Trip Halfway Point: an obscure place called Bucksnort. Go check it out, it really is a real town!
Once we got out of the countryside and into the city, one thing that struck me in particular about Memphis was this giant pyramid:
It's apparently a former arena, used for sports and concerts, that had encountered so many problems it was dubbed "the Tomb of Doom". It's currently being revamped as the US's largest Bass Pro Shops location. Hopefully that will break the curse!
The Mississippi was up next, looking a bit low due to the drought, but still retaining some impressivity:
Heading into Arkansas was the first really big geographical change that really showed that this wasn't the East Coast anymore. Feel free to think of most of the possible Midwest cliches during these next few pictures (but not all, remember to save some for Oklahoma!):
Finally, we made it to a KOA campground just outside of North Little Rock, and luckily for us (but not the rest of the state which desperately needed water) the ominous-looking cloud turned out to be nothing at all. We set up shop quickly and efficiently, this being our third day in a row at it, and once again got to bed early, ready to tackle the rest of AR and make a dent in OK tomorrow!
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