fall in Arkansas

Last week, I travel to Arkansas. Not a new state, but a new part of the state for me. I was attending the Presbyterians for Earth Care conference at Ferncliff Camp and Conference Center and Little Rock, which required a drive through Mississippi, the northeastern corner of Louisiana, and the southeastern corner of Arkansas.


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I admit I dozed till we were out of LA... and most of the rest of the day... (we left at 6:30AM and I was easily up till at least 2 the night before)...

But I was awake for northeastern LA, as well as most of the ride home. It was interesting to see what just a few hours' drive north does to the landscape and climate. For one, it was FALL in Arkansas!



 (It was still pretty warm in southern Louisiana when we left.) Also, there were rocks there!



(Southern Louisiana doesn't really have those occurring naturally. I'll gladly give you the geography lesson if you're curious.)

It was interesting to see how quickly the landscape would transition from small, fairly nice, well kept homes to run down trailers and dilapidated shacks. It was even more interesting to think, the latter are homes nonetheless.

I was also fascinated to look at the map later and see the the boundaries of Louisiana and Mississippi don't entirely follow the river, but are caught behind some remnant oxbow lakes leftover from the earlier days of the Mississippi River's meandering (more geography lessons for later, if you'd like).

Wide open spaces and vast agricultural land occasionally gave way to small towns, including Lake Village, AR, which had a bustling Chinese food restaurant that we stopped in (Kris asked a question about including some extra fresh ginger and garlic, which the very Caucasian server was very caught off guard by, before letting us know that they didn't have any of that but could add some garlic powder) (and man that was the saltiest Chinese food I've ever had).


Always and adventure, and always leaves me wanting to explore more.

what we saw after Tennessee

After our awesome night out in Memphis, we had a pretty awful time trying to find our hotel in West Memphis, Arkansas. It had recently changed names but not really signage and was off a very confusing interchange... oh, Arkansas. My older brother had told me that would be the crappiest part of my drive, as he had recently driven through it and not enjoyed it, but I held out hope.

Before continuing on through Arkansas the next day, though, a few of us made a short return to Memphis to attend various churches. I dropped Maciej off at mass and Jakub and I went to a Presbyterian church a little further outside of downtown. Then, I had the great fortune to cross paths with my friend Dan-- we were campers together for five summers in a row, but now we only hang out once every few years when he's floated back north of the Mason-Dixon line. He went to college in Memphis and is still in the area, which I figured out after our adventures on Beale Street. We met up for breakfast at a historic restaurant called The Arcade, which had some awesome sweet potato pancakes. Good to catch up with Dan.

On our way. We checked out of the hotel and continued up the eastern side of Arkansas. I already summer up that drive, which brought us to St. Louis. I didn't expect the city to suck, but I certainly didn't expect it to be as pretty or cool as it was. We obviously started at the Arch (Jefferson Gateway Expansion National Park), where the Air Force Mid-America band was performing. We tried to go through the museum of expansion, but it had a really confusing layout so we kind of gave up.

We did a big loop around the city in hopes of finding a few particular landmarks after trying Imo's pizza, a local staple. I wasn't crazy about the cheese (it's some weird St. Louis cheese) but the thin crust was pretty good. So, wandering. The city hall was a really beautiful building. We walked past Union Station. We sought out the City Museum, which looked AWESOME but was closed. I guess I'll have to go back sometime, which wouldn't be terrible-- my good friend Emily is from the area, in fact, we stayed with her father that night (she lives in DC now). It was kind of funny to sleep in her bed, but definitely some good rest before our sojourn across Illinois...

beer of the day: Morgan Street Brewery's Red Lager