Bucksnort, for Douglas

Well, turns out my computer has a virus of some sort, so I can't get the pictures on here yet. Maybe next week after I visit my computer savvy friend in Galveston. It's that or give the Geek Squad $200 and my computer for two weeks, and I can't live without my computer for two weeks!

Back to the trip, for Douglas. Tuesday we drove through "New England", which is called that because of all the immigrants from England during the late 1600s and 1700s. We saw things like the Thames River in Connecticut, and towns called New this or that. New London, New Haven, etc. I suppose that's where we get new Jersey and new York and new Hampshire too!

In Virginia we saw license plates that proclaimed the 400th birthday of the state. The first settlers came over in 1607. I'm sure that I learned about it in school, but can't remember much now. Jamestown colony perhaps? Maybe you can find out and let me know.

Tennessee is a long rectangle of a state. It took us all day to drive through it. We started in Knoxville, which is very close to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Very pretty area. We camped there once when the girls were really young (Mary Grace wasn't even a year old yet!) but they don't remember it. Then on to Nashville, home to country music. Do you have a country music station in Johannesburg? If not, I'll have to make a cd of some of our favorites and send it along to you.

We passed the birthplace of Davy Crockett, who was a frontiersman. There was a tv show in the 1950s about him, and many boys wore coonskin caps to be like Davy. I think Uncle James and I sent you one once, from the Alamo.

By this time there was a lot of country music on our radio. In Boston, we only have one country music station. But in Nashville there were several to choose from! All along the way it had been green rolling hills, the mountains slowly giving way to hills.

East of Nashville we got in front of a big "oversized" load truck. It was tiered, and looked like a giant chocolate cake with white icing piped along all the edges. I have no idea what it was, but it was coming fast. "Oversized" loads have guide vehicles with lights and flags, at least one in front and one behind. The front one was nearing 80 miles per hour (not sure of the kms) and it kept coming up to us. I could see the truck with the big thing on it and it was scary - I didn't want it to pass us! Eventually I found a Dairy Queen and we pulled off the road for a while. Dairy Queen is a restauant sort of like Wimpy's - they have hamburgers, chicken fingers, and soft serve ice creams. We had ice creams and looked at the map for a bit, then got back out onto the road.

One funny town we passed was named "Bucksnort". I thought it might be a joke, but nope! That's the name! Bucksnort, Tennessee. Birdsong was a much prettier named town further west.

Memphis was the next big city. James had suggested we stop at Land Between the Lakes recreation area, but it was too far north for us. Uncle James had a fishing trip there once and says that it is very green, peaceful and pretty. I didn't get the fishing report though.

So we went on to Memphis. It is named for a city in ancient Egypt. It has a big glass pyramid on the banks of the Mississippi River. Elvis Presley lived in Memphis when he was very famous, and his home is still there for visitors to go see. It's called Graceland. The wait in summer is hours long to get in, so we didn't stop for that either. The girls didn't care much about Elvis anyway. We joked about having fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches for dinner, one of Elvis' favorites.

Memphis has a place called Mud Island, where you can see a scaled replica of the Mississippi River, from its source in Minnesota, all the tributaries and other rivers that feed into it, and all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico at New Orleans. Right now the Mississippi River is flooding quite badly. There was too much rain last month in Iowa, Illinois and Missouri. Whole towns have been flooded. Cedar Rapids, Iowa is one of the worst hit. There are levees but many of them are old and the water has burst through. Farmers are worried because the corn crops have been flooded, which means the U.S. won't have as much corn this year.

Music in Memphis is very different to Nashville. Memphis is home to the blues - your Uncle James' favorite kind of music. He's got SO many blues cds! I can't even begin to tell you how he loves the blues. :-)

On Friday we drove through Arkansas. It was such a difference at the river - the mountains we'd seen in eastern Tennessee were pretty, but now it was flat "river bottom" land, which is rich dark soil. We saw many fields of rice, and hoped that the flooding wouldn't affect these farmers.

Little Rock is the capital of Arkansas, and it is hilly like in Tennessee. We passed Hope, the town where President Clinton was born, and then drove through the southern part of the Ozark Mountains, which are also rolling green mountains.

Texarkana is a town that sits in two states, Texas and Arkansas. They have a street called "State Line Road". The street light poles have flags showing which state they are - in the middle of the street, you're driving on the state line! It was funny.

We played a car game we call "The ABC game". You have to find the letters of the alphabet in order, on signs only, not on other moving cars. I'm pretty good at it, but now the girls are older they try very hard to beat me. Mary Grace won one round, the first time I've been beaten in years. But when we were driving through deep east Texas, in the Piney Woods, there aren't many signs to use for playing! Q is a very tough letter, but if you can find a La Quinta hotel or a Dairy Queen, you've got it made. (that's La keenta, and it means something like a villa or country house)

When we got home, we had a nice evening with Uncle James. We went to see Uncle Glen play jazz at a seafood restaurant. Grandma Trudy and Uncle Ronald met Glen when your Uncle James and I got married. Uncle Ronald and Glen are very alike, I think.

We also went to the girls grandparents place - their Grandma Grace and Pawpaw, which is a Texan way of saying "grandpa". We had breakfast tacos - that's scrambled eggs, hash browns, bacon or sausage and a bit of cheese wrapped up in a tortilla. You can add salsa (chopped tomatoes, onion, cilantro) if you want it to be spicy. Tastes like home to us! Do you get tortillas in South Africa? It's a Mexican way of making bread, and one of my favorites.

That's a very long post, all for Douglas, all about our trip across the U.S. Let me know if you have any questions or if you would like us to send you any maps or things. I'll get the computer fixed and pictures up when I can.

Oh yeah, this is for Carol: http://www.johnnyclegg.com/ He's wonderful!