Arkansas Baby!

Sorry I didn't blog yesterday. Nothing personal. No really, it's not you it's me. I think we should see other blogs. Wait, what am I saying....

It's not that yesterday was particularly busy. We hung out, swam and went to dinner. Baby did not try his buoy impersonation again but Tater, I guess feeling left out, decided to take the plunge. Grandpa's swimmie purchase the day before came in real handy and Tater just bounced in and out. So enough about yesterday, on to today's adventure.

First however, a hearty thank you to Grandpa and Grandma for hosting us. We had a lovely time at your house and hopefully did not leave too much of a mess behind. Bet it's reeeeaaallll quiet though, eh?

Despite our hosts' hospitality, I was kind of eager to get back on the road. I find this ironic considering I was born in and currently live in a city. What's an urban elitist like me doing being a highway junkie? (my apologies to Randy Travis). There's something about watching the rolling hills and fluffy clouds go by that I really like.

We also realized that we painted ourselves into a corner with our current itinerary. We'd be getting back home real late on Friday. We'd have to unpack, clean the RV and get it back to the rental place by 11:00 am the next day. Seeing as how it took us a full day to load the beast, we were not holding out hope that we could unload it in a hour or two. Also, since the RV spent a day in the service shop, we were entitled to an extra day. So now the current plan is to return to home on Saturday. That means an entire week on the road. And you know what? I'm kind of jazzed about that.

Anyway, we got on the road about 9:00 this morning. After about a mile of travel, and because Bo Hunkmeister knows how to take care of his woman, we pulled into a little coffee shack by the side of the road, The Cowgirl Coffee Cafe (tag line: "Have you had your Cowgirl yet?"). I think the young woman who waited on me was Daisy Duke's older, smarter sister. She was so friendly, I started to get irritated that she didn't care about my coffee needs. Come to find out she's got relations in Rhode Island. It's a small world.

Having chatted and with drink in hand, we got back on the road. Only to stop again at Pops. It's a place that has just about every soda in the world. I learned that Cheer Wine, a soda I had in North Carolina that no one could explain to me, is actually cherry soda. Please relay this important piece of information to your church, Dan.

Back on the road again, the kids were pretty much done with the license plate search and the highway bingo thing so Bo suggested we keep a list of road kill. Isn't he the sweetest? Princess Git Er Done kept track in her note book. It sounded like a morbid McDonald's order ("That's two opossum and one unidentified"). Counting the live cattle and horses by the side of the road is a futile task. There's just too many of them.

Things went smoothly until about 2:00 pm. Then the kids started getting antsy. What's a mom to do? Have a Dwight Yoakum Karaoke Hour! I like hearing my kids sing "Girl I'm thankin' you for teachin' me brand new ways to be cruel. If I find my mind, well I guess I'll just leave." We topped it off with a stop at an ice cream shop.

We pulled into Little Rock about 5:30 pm, deliriously happy to be in camp before the sun went down. We ate dinner, the kiddos swam for a bit and here we are. All nice and cozy in our camper, blogging. Life is good.