Crossing Four States from Arkansas to Alabama

We started the day in Fayetteville, Arkansas, home of the "Razorbacks," pictured here in our Great Western motel pool area.  They can also be seen on many Arkansas license plates.

As we started out, it was 72 degrees at an elevation of 1,268 feet, and sunny with a few clouds.  Today's journey began through the Boston Mountains on Interstate 40 toward Memphis, where we saw bright pink waves of "Showy Evening Primrose" in large drifts along the highway.  These flowers are a major part of Arkansas's "Operation Wildflower" plantings.  Traveling along with us through the mountains for a bit was a group of Harley-Davidson motorcyclists who quickly moved on ahead of us.

The Boston Mountains have a light green tone as the new leaves are well developed at this date.  We saw a sign for an exit to "Devil's Den State Park" along the highway.  Known for caves, crevices, waterfalls, and its Civil Conservation Corps-built stone structures dating from 1933 to 1944.  Too far of a detour for us on this journey, but it sounded interesting.  

The road feels like a tunnel in long stretches along Highway 40, with trees lining both sides consistently.  Luckily, we get fuel and food stops at "Love's Truck Stops" as we travel the interstate, which is a welcome relief from the mesmerizing highway.  The price of unleaded gas ranges from $3.19 to $3.50 per gallon, which is also very welcome.

We passed Lake Dardanelle and the Arkansas River on I-40, but I was never able to get a good photo of either due to the trees along the road.  We did spy a swampy area along the highway and our first roadkill armadillo.  I didn't realize they were this far north, but we have always seen them along Florida roads.

Reaching Little Rock, the temperature had risen to 82 degrees, and our elevation was down to 278 feet above sea level.  Here, we captured a glimpse of a L'Oréal factory or distribution warehouse, a branch of the Lancôme corporation.  In 2012, I was a counter manager for Lancôme at Dillard's in Casa Grande, Arizona.  Of interest to Jim, we saw a Remington Sporting Ammunition factory here.  A huge First Pentecostal Church was situated on the interstate in North Little Rock.

In Memphis, Tennessee, there's a large facility for transferring shipping containers from truck to truck.  It is called "Memphis Intermodal Facility," and it has multiple cranes to lift and shift these heavy containers.  It was amazing!

Snoopy has really turned into a good traveler.  He's gotten used to the car and hotel rooms.  The only thing he hates is the transition between them in the carrier.  He didn't realize he crossed the Mississippi River today in the photo below!

As we traveled today through Arkansas and Tennessee, we noticed the pine trees were dying or falling down along the road in numbers too numerous to ignore.  What was happening?  Some research informed us that they are browning, thinning, or dying from "brown spot needle blight", a fast-spreading fungal disease that has surged in the region over the past few years.  It is affecting mature loblolly pines, not just longleaf seedlings, according to AI Copilot.  One photo can't show the magnitude of this issue for mile after mile of travel today.

We made it to Alabama today and stopped in Jasper.  This was the longest we've traveled in a day, and we're both tired.  We ate at "Jim 'N Nick's Community BBQ" tonight, and it was absolutely delicious!  Put this in your "someday to visit" memos.  We expect to reach Florida tomorrow.  Jim and Snoopy have figured out the route already this evening.

  

April 16 Moving South - Kansas to Arkansas

Starting the day early at 8:30 am in Hays, Kansas, gave us 56-degree weather and clear skies for the beginning of our drive and the goal of reaching Arkansas tonight.  The landscape before us fully met our imagination of Kansas topography, flat and a view for miles!  The cultivated fields are already bringing forth green shoots and look like a luxurious green carpet leading out from the road to the horizon. 

  

Oil drilling rigs, wind generators, and Eastern cottonwood trees share the view with farm homes and fields.  

The Eastern cottonwood trees are sprouting their leaves more and more as we drive east.  They were landmarks for pioneers traveling west, indicating water along creeks and rivers, shade, and a place to rest.  Prefering moist soils, these trees, however, tolerate heat, drought, and harsh winters, all conditions Kansas regularly delivers.  Evidence of wildfires was also visible with strikingly green fields covering wide areas where the fires had spread, in contrast to other nearby fields still covered with dry, brown grass.

We spied five horses standing in the shade of an R.V. park's billboard early on.  Later, there was antique farm machinery sporting a sign that read "BANKERY" meaning it was a cottage or home-based business selling homemade baked goods directly to consumers.

Kansas has an abundance of both modern-day wind generators and the older windmills across the fields we passed.  The newer one is for electricity, and the older one is for pumping water.  Often, we saw the windmills providing water for livestock. Here I captured a photo of both the old and the new together.  

In Park City, Kansas, we passed "Thyssenkrupp Aerospace" which focuses on metals distribution, processing, and logistics for aerospace manufacturers within the U.S. distribution network.  Near Wichita, Kansas, we passed an unusual, white geodesic home.  Finally, in Fredonia, Kansas, I got a photo of one of the many grain storage facilities we saw along our route today.

  

We passed through Missouri briefly on today's route, where it is easy to see the layers of stratified rock exposed by highway cuts through the rolling Ozark Mountains.  Hundreds of millions of years of sediment piling up in ancient seas here were followed by a slow uplift.  Exposed by road construction and through natural, deep erosion, it is an interesting introduction to geology.

  

We ended our day in Fayetteville, Arkansas, at what appeared to be rush hour.  Grateful to arrive at our reserved Great Western Inn lodging for the night, we ordered in from Pizza Hut and called it a day.

From Winter to Summer in One Day

Yesterday's snowstorm left plenty of reminders of winter along I-80 this morning, alongside the clear road surfaces we traveled under a sunny, blue sky.  We left early at 8:30 am, wearing winter coats in 39-degree weather.  

 

Along the way, we saw a herd of pronghorn.  Often called antelope, they are common in Wyoming, which holds their largest population in North America, about 320,000 animals.  I was amazed I was able to capture a quick photo of them while we traveled at 75 miles per hour!

Another quick photo early today was of a buffalo.  Not a real one, but a metal sculpture of one.

Before leaving Wyoming, we spotted more evidence of natural gas production, electric transfer stations for wind generators, and oil pumping machinery near Cheyenne.  Energy production is well underway from Laramie to Cheyenne and beyond.

 

In Fort Collins, Colorado, we passed a large Anheuser-Busch Budweiser plant, and then in Loveland, Colorado, we spotted a huge Amazon facility while traveling on I-87.

Taking a bypass route to avoid going into Denver, we passed by the Denver International Airport with its white-roof terminal.  Also, nearby is the Colorado Air and Space Port, one of the FAA-licensed commercial spaceports in the U.S.  It supports horizontal launch concepts for future suborbital travel with two long runways about 8,000 feet in length.

We subsequently connected to I-70, and after lunch at McDonald's, I drove on the straight and level interstate highway, continuing easterly into Kansas.  The views all around us converted to flat farmland as far as the eye could see beneath a blue sky and white cumulus clouds, as the temperature rose to 79 degrees by the time we stopped in Hays, Kansas.  Today, we passed the halfway point of our journey.

From a Lost Kitty to a Snow Storm Pause

We began our day in Evanston, Wyoming, at the Best Western with a moment of heart-pounding stress.  Returning to our room after breakfast, Snoopy was nowhere to be found!  After searching high and low, we couldn't find him anywhere.  I envisioned him escaping while Jim put things in the car.  Jim worried that perhaps the housekeeper had inadvertently given him a chance to escape.  Finally, we decided neither of those events had occurred, and he must have made his way under the bed.  After removing all the bedding, the king mattress, and moving apart two box springs, his head popped up from beneath them.  Somehow, he had fit in between the wall and the enclosure they put under hotel beds these days.  Unfortunately, Snoopy has a good memory, so now we will have to block that space carefully each time we check into a room.

Heading east from Evanston, we continued along I-80 today.  The first thing that we noticed was a striking range of snow-covered mountains running east to west, parallel to the highway beyond some wind generators.  They are the Uinta Mountains in northeast Utah, the only east-to-west trending mountain range in the contiguous Rocky Mountains.  It looked as though they had a very generous snow accumulation over the winter.

This area of Wyoming has many interesting geological formations visible from the highway.  Buttes with very steep sides and flat or narrow tops appear regularly.  Created from a plateau or mesa, the surrounding softer rock wears away over time, leaving the harder core standing alone.

Another beautiful feature here is stratified rock made up of distinct, visible layers called strata.  Formed by sediment or volcanic material deposited sequentially over long periods of time that vary in color, composition, or grain size, these combine to create the visible layers.

We observed that there is a lot of natural gas being collected in this area, with sites bringing it out of the ground as well as what appears to be processing equipment and buildings, too.

This area deals with wind and substantial snow in the winter, and you can see snow drift fences constructed along the road to control drifting snow.  Once, we thought we saw a live elk standing by a snow fence, but after passing by, we realized it was a metal sculpture!

 

 

The straight roads here extend for miles into the distance, and after a while, it becomes mesmerizing, and you have to work hard to stay alert.

A serpentine-shaped ridge stood out to us along our drive, and a snow-draped hill foretold what was soon to become a challenging drive in the snow!

Approaching Laramie, Wyoming, we drove into a snowstorm that made visibility of vehicles in front of us almost dangerously impossible.  Prudently, we decided to stop for the day at our age.  Finding a Best Western motel, we waited out the storm and then headed into town for dinner.  The hills around town were covered in snow.   

 

Driving into Laramie, we passed by the University of Wyoming, one of the many universities in the western United States that Jim acquired for yearbook production when he worked as a professional photographer.

Upon the recommendation of the front desk at our hotel, we had dinner at Wyoming Rib & Chop House. It was delicious and the best baby back ribs we've had in a long time.  A perfect way to end the day!