wait so we updated the forums

huh

Still full from the Neely's barbecue, we all just had a few glasses of juice for breakfast. We learned that the BBQ festival was more smell than eat, so we scratched it from our itinerary.

We realized last night that we were staying near the famous Peabody Hotel, which is famous not for being swanky (which it is - everything is marble or intricately carved wood) as much as it is for having five ducks, which live on the roof and parade from the elevator to the lobby at 11:00 in the morning and 5:00 at night. This dubious tradition started some time in the 40s, when a few of the hotel's proprietors got drunk and thought that it would be an excellent idea to put live ducks in the fountain. (I'm sure that would make complete sense if you were drunk.) Surprisingly, the ducks liked it, and thus the legend of the Peabody Ducks came into being. It was a very big deal - I estimate that at least a few hundred people were crammed into the opulent lobby.

Seeing the Memphis Redbirds gate open, we went in to look around and see if we could get a pennant ... but no, that was not to be. I don't know why they opened the gates without opening something else up, but apparently they did. Realizing that this wasn't a big deal, we hopped in the car and headed west once again.

I crossed the Mississippi River for the first time. It was ... a river. I'm not sure why I was expecting something more, but it was still awesome to know that we were going over the Mississippi. We then entered into Arkansas, where we stopped in the visitor's center to collect more maps than necessary.

We got into Little Rock (North Little Rock, if you want to get technical), where the Arkansas Travelers, the double-A minor league affiliate of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (itself the most confusing name in all of professional sports), play. There was a game that night against the Naturals, but we had to get all the way out to Oklahoma City within the day and stopping in Little Rock would have thrown our plans well off course. There were very nice people there, who led us through the front office to the store. We got a pennant and a postcard there, and the man who helped us actually knew the guy who let us in at the Nashville Sounds stadium. After that, they let us in the empty ballpark ("as long as you look like you know what you're doing, you'll be fine," the man told us), where we got a few pictures.

Another long stretch of hills, curves, and valleys lay along the rest of I-40 going into Oklahoma. The Ozarks were to the north and the Ouachitas to the south - the latter is one of very few mountain ranges in the world to run east-west. (Its highest point, Mt. Magazine, is a little over 2,000 feet. There's also a place where you can apparently mine for diamonds inside a volcano.) Arkansas is much more of the Breadbasket than it is of the South, but is similar to Tennessee in a lot of ways: its roads are very well kept, the people are cordial, and outside of the metropolitan areas it's very rural. It's a leading producer in pretty much every agricultural product, save citrus. While the Memphis residents didn't seem to think much of Arkansas - I didn't see what they didn't like about it.

(Side note: Arkansas and Oklahoma have the right idea: through road construction, they go one lane in either direction. This prevents idiotic drivers from getting down to their equally idiotic instincts and jockeying for position in two-land road construction.)

We then entered Oklahoma (or occupied north Texas, for some people), where we stretched our legs and each got a half a sub sandwich. Aside from a few crackers in the car, we had eaten no solid food for the entire day. (Note to self: Neely's fills you up. A lot.)

The OKC joint we were going to eat at ... was closed. Apparently they easily run out of food, though that just prompts me to wonder why they don't just store more foodstuffs to begin with.

Apparently, the interstate was so new that our GPS didn't know that it existed, and kept telling us to suicidally turn our car into concrete walls. Obviously, we were not going to do that - and spending the majority of over seven hours cooped up in a car, unable to stretch out, made us a little antsy to say the least. For outsiders such as us, the street system of OKC is somewhat confusing, though we eventually got to our hotel.

Once inside, I collapsed onto the soft bed. We debated going back out but we eventually just ate at the hotel; we were just too beat to go out somewhere. (My dad ordered mashed potatoes and a baked potato along with his steak. I have no idea why.)

Tomorrow: more of OKC before our next stop in Amarillo.