Back in the 215 – Traveling across the country/getting un-jetlagged put the kibosh on writing for a few days! 

10/12/13

As we were leaving the motel around 6:30 AM (Central time now) a gentleman was checking out in front of us.

“Last name?”

“Davis”

“First?”

“Keith.  Keith Davis.”

Keith Davis was checking someone else out of the room, and booking another room for that night.  “Can I get some extra keys?  My girlfriend will get here before me.”

Other than this observation, I have no other evidence to substantiate my claim, but I say this with full confidence:

40 miles west of Nashville, in Dickson, Tennessee, we were watching a truck stop pimp in action.  Keith Davis.

The most boring day of the trip

SO BORING

Part 1: Dickson to Maumelle, 321 miles

We passed through Memphis with little fanfare, and over the Mississippi river, into Arkansas, officially  into the west.

Anthony planned the trip with AAA, so they gave him actual paper maps of the country.  I play with Google maps for fun (I just love maps, don’t know why) so I had a fucking blast playing with these brand new instant relics.  If you ever look away from an LCD screen (not too common in 2013, I know) be sure to use a paper map sometime.  It’ll be something your grandkids won’t believe you used!

Arkansas is when I started to use the second map, so it was kind of a big deal.

But mostly Arkansas was boring as shit.  Things started spreading out, we saw lots of farms and lots of ranches.  Not too many people.  Around 10 AM we saw our first cotton fields, and that’s really the first noteworthy thing that happened.  Then we went through a fucking ABSURD thunderstorm, the first of a few in the tornado alley.  I don’t know why or how people live out here.  The rural midwest sucks.

We were near Little Rock at 11:30 so we stopped in North Little Rock for lunch.  It was ghetto as hell and Anthony got bad vibes from the yelp!-recommended lunch place.  Turns out it was closed anyways and we headed back onto I-40.  Fucking Arkansas.

Maumelle, AR was in some ways refreshing.  Mostly because there were people that didn’t look like they wanted to kill us.  The people were becoming noticeably more obese here and the trend carried on throughout the midwest.  We stopped at “Smokeshack B-B-Q” and I suddenly understood why.

We were in the heart of college football country and it was gameday in Arkansas.  (Spoilers: The Razorbacks were the first of 2 teams Anthony mushed that day.)   Everyone in the dining room (and people waiting on their food) were watching Arkansas take on SC, the waitress was stopping to watch too.  There was a back room with other college games going on, and old white dudes sitting by themselves watching them.  It’s bizarre that so many people who didn’t go to college are so interested in college football.  The south is bizarre.

The food though, is phenomenal.  I got a pulled pork sandwich with wet slaw that was a solid 8.5/10.  I only fell asleep for half an hour after eating it, though it still gets a half-point bump from the itis up to a 9.0.  That and a drink were less than $6 and suddenly realized that I may have the highest salary of anyone in the building (and my salary is peanuts in Philadelphia).

Part 2: Maumelle to Oklahoma City – 326 miles

Anthony woke me from that day’s nap at a “scenic overlook” above Lake Dardanelle in the middle of fucking nowhere.

As a whole, Arkansas sucked balls.

Oklahoma sucked more.  We crossed over at 2:22 PM and got gas right over the border in a little town called Roland.  The vibe was strange, and the gas stations were run by Native American Indians, not Subcontinental ones. Anthony likened Oklahoma to the Canada of Texas.  It was strangely accurate as we hit “Canadian County, OK” around 7 PM.

There was lots more nothing.  Some casinos and some flat dusty land, surrounded by nothing.  From 3 PM until 5 PM, we didn’t have internet service on our phones.  In hindsight, maybe the worst state of the whole trip.  We started getting service again when we were about this close to Oklahoma City.

We were there around 5:30 on a Saturday and the downtown was DESERTED. Post-apocalyptic even.  We saw maybe 6 other people as we walked around the block to a -get this- sushi and sports bar.  It was an upscale place, relatively speaking, but was a sports and sushi bar, so the ceiling was pretty low.

Parse that again and realize that you aren’t missing out on anything by never going to Oklahoma City.  The Sooners lost to unranked Texas, Anthony’s second mush of the day.

Part 3: Oklahoma City, OK to Shamrock, TX – 166 miles

We left Oklahoma around 7 PM, our motel was a couple hours away and the midwest had sapped our energy quickly.

I missed the exact time that we got into Texas, though it was after nightfall and the panhandle was indistinguishable from western Oklahoma.  The roads may have been a little nicer, but there was nothing but ranches all around.  At that time of night we could only find 4 radio stations, all of which sucked.  We finally arrived to a sleepy little town called Shamrock, Texas, which was too boring to take any pictures of.  I was incredibly disappointed that these past few states have sucked so much.  Just a wasted effort, and the low point of the trip.

The worst of things was over with, finally.  Things turn around from this point on.

Total distance traveled: Today – 813 miles, Total – 1707 miles.