Hogs, hills and howdy!

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

OKLAHOMA CITY, OK — New day, new state! We had another good day, with sunshine and blue sky – and plenty of that in Oklahoma’s wide plains. It got up to 70 degrees today by the time we got to our KOA campsite, so we celebrated by cooking burgers on the barbeque for supper.

Before heading out from Russellville, Val found the lyrics of the musical “Oklahoma!” on the internet so I could do a proper rendition of the title song as we crossed the state line. I got to perform a couple of bars for the ladies at the Oklahoma Welcome Center when we stopped for maps and literature. I think Val was pleased that there weren’t too many people in the office at the time.

Our trip today took us past rolling hills and wooded sections near the Arkansas state line, as well as several rivers, including the Arkansas River and another called the North Canadian River, and lakes. But the main impression of Oklahoma so far has been one of wide prairies with yellow grass, farm buildings, grazing cows and a big, big sky.

There were several large concrete teepees decorating the Oklahoma Welcome Center’s front lawn, and inside was a huge painting of Indians and covered wagons trekking across the plains. Indians, as the Americans call their native peoples, appeared to have an important place in Oklahoma’s history and culture, and after our visit to the center, we found out why.

In the years around 1830, as the Europeans began to settle the eastern states of the US, they expelled Indian nations and forced them to relocate westward to an area designated as Indian Territory. The territory was parceled out to each nation, including Pawnee, Choctaw, Cherokee, and dozens of others, who had to walk from their homelands in the east with whatever possessions they could carry to this new land and build a new life. One Indian chief called this trek a “trail of tears”.

Indian Territory became Oklahoma. Today there are more than 39 tribal nations here, and some 250,000 descendants of the original 67 nations still call Oklahoma home. The Indian heritage of Oklahoma is now celebrated and honoured in museums and visitor centres in several parts of the state. All this history was quite new to both of us; we had never heard these accounts before today.

Several times along the way we passed road crews working on the highway. The road bed is made of thick slabs of concrete, reinforced with rebar, so it provides a really solid base, but over time, small gaps develop between the slabs. As a result, in many places along the way, our truck and trailer endured a rough ride, going ga-dunk, ga-dunk, ga-dunk over the gaps. I could just picture our plates and glasses in the trailer cupboards jumping up and down with each ga-dunk. But, fortunately, we found no damage when we reached our destination.

Large billboards were peppered along the roadsides, enticing travelers to turn off for juicy steaks, to seek salvation, to hit the jackpot at casinos, or to fill up with low-priced fuel. A theme that we had encountered both in Arkansas and Oklahoma was the pig. The razorback hog appears to be a symbol for Arkansas, and barbequed pork is a popular dish. At the filling station where we stopped to fuel up after lunch, there were three large pigs out front made from oil cans, in front of the Pig Out Palace. When we are in a location that allows us to post the photos I took, you'll be able to have a look!

Toad Suck State Park

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

RUSSELLVILLE, AR – The names of some places we pass on the highway are too quirky to ignore. Hence the title of today’s entry, which is an honest-to-goodness attraction in the state of Arkansas! It reminded me of one in Pennsylvania that was called Hungry Mother State Park. Where do they get these names?

Shortly after we left the RV park this morning, we turned in to the Arkansas welcome centre for maps and information. I asked the attendant why the last syllable of her state is pronounced “ah” when it reads “as”, and she said that in the 1890s the state passed a bill establishing the correct pronunciation, and that’s what it has been ever since.

We had a perfectly beautiful day for traveling today, with clear skies and bright sunshine. We hit a high of about 58, so it was really quite pleasant. Signs of spring are everywhere – more and more emerald green fields spread out on either side of the highway, and we caught glimpses of flowering fruit trees and even wild daffodils as we drove.

Today we saw more evidence of wildlife than any other so far. Unfortunately, a lot of it was squished on the side of the highway, including a deer, a racoon, and a coyote. I saw a couple of slender white cranes wading through some roadside ponds, and we saw a couple of hawks close up as well. At our campground this evening we could hear cardinals trilling away nearby. For us, March has definitely come in like a lamb.

We passed through Little Rock this morning, and I read in one of the pamphlets we picked up about the Little Rock Nine – the nine African-American teenagers who, in 1957, tested the notion of equal rights for all by trying to attend an all-white high school in that city. They were turned away at first by the Arkansas National Guard, but some days later, on orders of President Eisenhower, were escorted by the US Army to class. It sparked news stories everywhere. Val says he remembers that event very well, but I can’t say I do; I was under 10 years of age when it happened. Now there is a civil rights museum across the street from Little Rock Central High School, which has also been declared a National Historic Site, and 2,400 students still attend the fully-integrated school.

We stopped for lunch and fuel at a truck stop just off the highway. It was a bustling place, and in the parking area there were dozens of tractor-trailers parked, still running, while their drivers paused for food, a shower, or just a break from their trek on the Interstate. There were literally hundreds of the huge trucks on the road, heading in both directions. I tried to look through the cab windows of oncoming tractor-trailers to see if any of them had companions in the passenger seats, but I didn’t see any. It must be a lonely life, but some drivers must prefer it that way.

Once we were settled at our RV park, we headed to the local Walmart for food and supplies. It was rather fitting for us to choose that particular store, as the chain had its beginnings in this state when Sam and Helen Walton opened their variety store in 1945 in Bentonville, AR. The first Walmart was launched in Rogers, AR, in July of 1962. If we were headed for the northwest corner of this state, we could visit the Walmart Visitors’ Center that provides a full account of this American retailing success story.

Frozen in time

Monday, February 28, 2011

MARION, AK — It rained heavily through the night last night, so when we went to catch our bus for the tour of Memphis and Graceland, we wore our rain jackets, but it stayed dry all day. What it did not stay was warm. As the day went on, it got cool and then downright cold – it hit 37 degrees, after a summery 76 yesterday!

Our tour took us to see the sights of Memphis in the morning and Elvis Presley’s home, Graceland, and related museums, in the afternoon. First we visited Beale Street, the vibrant bar-and-music part of town. A. Schwab’s was an old general store with worn wooden floors and counters where you could still buy embroidered handkerchiefs, plaster piggy banks and belts up to 80 inches long.

Our next stop was the Sun Studio building where Elvis cut his very first record. The owner gave a lot of fledgling artists a helping hand, including Charlie Pride, Jerry Lee Lewis and other rock-n-roll greats. We also saw the Pyramid, which is a former sports arena, the Cotton Exchange, and the Lorraine Motel where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. The famous balcony bears a white wreath at the spot where he died. A Civil Rights Museum has been built on to the motel, but we were not able to go in and see it.

We passed the St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, a huge facility that cares for kids no matter what their financial means may be, and conducts research into children’s diseases. It was founded by entertainer Danny Thomas, whose body is entombed with his wife’s in a garden on the grounds.

We had a leisurely lunch at the Pork With An Attitude restaurant back on Beale Street with Barb and Janice, the two other full-day tour participants, who hailed from Australia but were probably the most-traveled people we’ve ever met! We asked where they hadn’t been, and they replied “Antarctica”!

Graceland, the home of Elvis Presley, is a gracious, pillared building set back from the road with a curved driveway and wide lawns. While some might call it a mansion, it was really just a large home with some opulent decorations, like a 15-foot white sofa in the living room set against a stained-glass doorway of brightly coloured peacocks that led to a smaller music room with a baby grand piano. The rooms reflected an eclectic decorating style of the sixties, including a family room with tiki-style carved wood furniture covered with striped fake fur, green shag carpet on the floor and ceiling, and a fake stone wall with trickling waterfall at the end of the room! We wore headsets that provided ongoing descriptions of each room, including the raquet-ball room where each of the high walls was completely covered with platinum records of dozens and dozens of hit songs Elvis had recorded and sold in the millions.

Outside in the Memorial Garden were the graves of Elvis, his parents and grandmother and a small memorial plaque for his twin brother who died at birth. All around them were wreaths and flowers from around the world.

The museums, displaying his cars, clothes, movie memorabilia and tributes were all on the opposite side of Elvis Presley Boulevard, so Graceland itself was separated from the kitsch. What struck us was the evidence of not only his prolific talent and output from a show-business viewpoint, but also his tremendous generosity. One wall had 40 cheques on display, signed by Elvis to charities and individuals, each in the amount of $1,000 — which at the time represented a considerable sum. He was known to give away Cadillacs to complete strangers who happened to be in the car showroom at the same time he was there (late at night to avoid crowds). He was presented with a huge plaque displaying some 50 charities and causes he had supported. We left with a new respect for an individual who had a humble start, achieved greatness, but remembered and cared for others.

Tale of three rivers

Sunday, February 27, 2011

MARION, AK— A rumble of thunder and the patter of rain on our trailer roof woke us this morning, but with a travel day planned, a wet day wasn’t a big deal. At least the rain held off while we stowed stuff, pulled in the slides and prepared to move on.

Shortly before lunch we crossed the Tennessee River, which marks the dividing line between central and western Tennessee. It was wide, brown, and swift-flowing, and must have presented a major challenge to settlers journeying west when there were no bridges.

I didn’t mention the Nashville flood in my blog yesterday. Last year, on May 2, heavy rains caused the Cumberland River, which flows through the city, to rise several feet, causing extensive damage to many important buildings, including the Grand Ole Opry, which had six feet of water inside. There’s a major shopping centre near it which remains closed to this day because the insurance money hasn’t covered the cost of restoring it. We heard a number of flood stories during our stay there.

Our destination today was a KOA camp in Arkansas, just across the Mississippi River, which delineates the state line at the western extreme of the state of Tennessee. The city of Memphis sits on the eastern shore of this mighty river, and West Memphis is on the Arkansas side after you cross the bridge. The camp is a 15-minute drive from the city, so our plan is to take a tour from here to see Memphis tomorrow.

Val remarked that the Interstate 40 along which we were driving must have been covered many times by Elvis Presley in his early days, going back and forth between Nashville and Memphis to perform and develop his unique sound. This stretch is called the Music Highway, since it connects two major music centres.

We drove through Memphis to get to our camp; it’s quite a big and bustling city, and we actually got caught in a traffic slow-down for a while due to a closed lane. The 40 became a ring road around most of the city before guiding us across the Mississippi River, another impressive, brown, wide waterway that has inspired quite a few stories and songs.

The Arkansas landscape so far is extremely flat, with large expanses of farmland and sky. I spotted, in the brown stubble of a plowed field, a few white tufts still clinging to some stalks, which made me realize these were cotton fields. We passed a lot of them in the latter part of the day.

There also seemed to be a marked change from the relatively prosperous state we just left to one, in its first few miles anyway, where the roads and buildings were in really poor shape. We also passed a few small, dilapidated houses that looked more like abandoned shacks but were clearly still being lived in. I don’t think I’ve seen such poor housing anywhere in Canada or the US as what I saw today.

We encountered several rainstorms as we drove along, but nothing like a couple of days ago, thank goodness. Weather is a constant concern in these parts, as strong storms can blow in, sometimes accompanied by tornadoes. We’ve been given instructions both at this camp and the last of what to do if we hear the tornado siren go off: run to the nearest washroom building, because they are built of cinder blocks that should provide a safe shelter.

It’s actually pretty windy right now, and the trailer is moving a bit with each gust. The big weather news for us today was the thermometer in the truck, which measured an amazing 76 degrees! The warmest temperature we’ve had so far! I stowed away my new Binghamton boots and my winter jacket, hat and scarf in the deepest closet of the trailer. Won’t need those now!

Music, music, music!

Saturday, February 26, 2011

NASHVILLE, TN – It has been a grand day and a full one. A beautiful sunrise greeted us bright and early; we wanted to catch the morning bus tour of Nashville so we couldn’t waste any time. Fortunately, there was room for us on the bus, so off we went to see the sights.

There are some impressive buildings and parks in the city of music, as it’s called. The main park of Nashville has a huge map of Tennessee laid out on the ground at the entrance, and along one side are monoliths marking the centuries, standing next to a wall that records the major events of each in turn. Carillon bells at the north end of the park play well-known Tennessee tunes on the hour and half hour, and along the east side of the park are time capsules for each county that will remain buried until 2096.

Our driver, Bill Davis, told us about the various districts of Nashville; the commercial sector, the night life sector, the restaurant sector and the music business sector, and people staying for the afternoon portion of the tour would also see the homes of the country music stars, but this didn’t interest us because, except for a few really big ones, we don’t really know who they are!

We visited the Ryman Auditorium, home of the first Grand Ole Opry. The round shape, with curved pews in sloped tiers, made for near-perfect acoustics. We saw lots of spangled costumes worn by Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn and others, and old videos of their performances. Val and I posed for a picture, complete with guitars and old-fashioned microphone, against the backdrop of the famous stage!

The Country Music Hall of Fame was the highlight of this tour. Everything about the building was a tribute to music, from its architecture (shaped like a bass clef, with high windows made to resemble piano keys) to its amazing design, to its huge variety of stars, their lives, their clothes and their toys. It must have been a real challenge to figure out how to provide visitors with recordings of the various stars while keeping the sounds at each display from mingling into an indistinct cacophony. They did it by focusing the music through umbrella-shaped cones, and by building padded, curved cubicles that you walked into to hear the old classics. Amazing.

Equally amazing were the beautiful dresses and suits of the stars, embellished with rhinestones and embroidery in a rainbow of colours. The Tammy Wynette display even included her shoes and wigs, plus a collection of pig figurines! We also saw Elvis Presley’s Cadillac, finished with layers of paint that contained crushed diamonds, and equipped with gold-plated door handles!

Our last stop was at the Legends Corner, a bar where guitars signed by Dolly Parton and others decorated the walls and a fledgling band in cowboy hats blasted our ears while we sipped complimentary soft drinks.

When the tour was over, we went for lunch at Caney Fork, a restaurant founded by a local outdoorsman who decorated the inside with stuffed critters of every description: bears, mountain goats, possums, turkeys and even raccoons complete with garbage cans, plus a pond in one section where real live two-foot-long catfish sashayed through the water. Our lunch included corn fritters and stew made with beef and venison!

After lunch we went out to a big grocery store in the suburbs so we could stock our empty larder. It was challenging trying to find plain stuff like fat-free ham or pita bread, which we like, but interesting to see cans of grits, displays of prawns, and miniature pineapples for sale.

Almost as soon as we got the food put away, we had to eat and head over to the main office for our bus to take us to the show at the Grand Ole Opry. Crowds of music enthusiasts streamed into the new building, built in a similar style to the Ryman Auditorium but on a larger scale. It seats 4,000 and there was nearly a full house. The show is a live radio broadcast, so it included commercial breaks, but there were more than a dozen talented performers who wowed the audience for two and half hours of foot-stompin’, hand-clappin’ down home music. Vince Gill and the Doobie Brothers were the big name stars, along with many others of all ages.

It was quite a day. We will long remember Nashville, the City of Music.

A helping hand

Friday, February 25, 2011

NASHVILLE, TN — The only glimpse of sunshine we had today was a few rays hitting the hillside as we headed west again on the Interstate 40 from Harriman. For the rest of our short, 150-mile trek it was overcast, but we were spared from rain. Wind, on the other hand, we had plenty of, which meant Val had to keep a firm and steadying grip on the steering wheel.

Very soon after we left Harriman, we entered the Central Time zone, which provided us with an extra hour. We stopped for fuel near Cookeville, and greeted another motorist. “Hah, y’all,” he replied, and we started to chat. When we said we were from Canada, he said “you won’t find any strangers here,” which has proved to be quite true so far.

We had a little problem to take care of upon our arrival in Nashville. Last night we tried to open the bedroom slide of our fifth wheel trailer, but when we hit the switch, nothing moved. Not finding an obvious explanation, we figured Nashville would probably have a trailer servicing business that could help us out.

Sure enough, as we drove down Music Valley Drive toward our KOA campground, we passed an RV business and a Camping World right in the neighbourhood (as well as the Grand Ole Opry! More on that tomorrow.) The KOA manager told us about their RV technician, Neal Stewart, and when Val called, he said he’d be by around 3 or so.

The campground sustained some fallen branches from yesterday’s severe weather – though no trailers were damaged. The manager figured it was lashed by the edge of the tornado that touched down two miles from here. We learned to head for the concrete shower building or main building if we should hear the tornado siren during our stay. I’ll gladly give that event a miss.

For the first time since we left Canada, we separated the truck from the trailer, and headed off for some lunch and a little look-see. I’m sure Val felt a certain lightness driving the truck without the 32-foot hunk of dead weight behind it.

A yellow utility truck pulled up to our site around 4 o’clock, and Neal, a giant bear of a man, stepped out to help us with our problem. The whole trailer lurched when he came in! He called us “mayam” and “sir” with the same southern drawl as Forrest Gump, and set to work. I prayed that it would be something small, and not something requiring us to drive the trailer to a dealer and leave it for days! Neal found a loose connector in the storage compartment electrical box, and when he tightened it, the slide whirred into place, to my whoops of delight. Meanwhile, we discovered that the microwave and the lights in the living room slide weren’t working. Neal fixed the microwave problem by tripping the breaker on our shore power connection. No sweat.

The living room lights was another story. He hemmed and hawed, checked the fuses, verified the connections and still couldn’t get them to work. Outside, he found another electrical box, and when he unscrewed the cover, a great gush of water spewed out! A little souvenir of yesterday’s deluge! Back inside, though, still no lights. We could tell Neal was really stymied. Then he ducked upstairs and back and flipped the switch. Voilà! It worked! The water had triggered the ground fault interrupter. Neal’s reset put everything to rights at last.

By this time we were hungry for dinner, so we decided to walk next door to the “Cock of the Walk” restaurant, which boasted the best catfish in town. We ate off of tin plates and drank from tin mugs. Our server brought a hot iron skillet with corn bread in it, which she flipped about three feet into the air and caught back in the pan before placing it on the table! Then she brought a large mess of catfish and fries, heaped on a tin platter, and placed it in front of us, along with a bowl of pickled onions. Our cole slaw came in an earthenware crock with a wooden spoon, and we fished our cutlery and napkins out of a tin pail sitting on the table. It was a most unusual – but tasty! – meal.

All-day car wash

Thursday, February 24, 2011

HARRIMAN, TN — Rain. Pelting, relentless, teeming, sloshing rain gushed out of the skies from the start of the day almost to its end! We weren’t unprepared, thanks to the weather channel, but we still couldn’t believe how steadily and heavily the rain came down, hour after hour.

Looking on the bright side, it wasn’t white, and it wasn’t frozen. We sailed through it (literally) in our dry, warm truck cabin with its heated seats and well-stocked cup holders. And when we stepped outside, our waterproof jackets reduced discomfort, as long as we moved fast.

We entered the state of Tennessee after about an hour and a half of driving, and turned off at the visitor centre to raid the racks of brochures and maps. Each state produces wonderful coupon books with discounts on hotel accommodations, and this has helped us shave quite a few dollars from the already very reasonable room rates we’ve encountered so far. Tonight will probably be our last hotel night; the temperatures are not summer-like yet, but quite bearable in a trailer equipped with a goose-down duvet and propane furnace.

Tennessee is one of the few states I can pick out easily on an unmarked map of the US; it’s the one that’s shaped sort of like a Pink Pearl pencil eraser – parallel borders top and bottom and slanted ones east and west. It’s the home of Davy Crockett, Dolly Parton, Elvis Presley, Martin Luther King Jr. and three of America’s presidents – among many others. It’s also the cradle of the Civil War, as Paul Simon describes it in his song, where a staggering 10,000 soldiers died in the space of five hours in a single battle.

Dozens of signs by the highway pointed out museums devoted to Civil War memorabilia. One of the brochures I picked up described many of the battles, as well as the human pain and misery endured by soldiers and civilians alike, black and white, north and south. It also said that one hopeful legacy of that dreadful time was the first sign of emancipation for the black population, when freed slaves were enlisted by the US government in “colored troops”, first of all to tend cannons or perform other support duties, but eventually to engage in full combat like any other soldier.

The rolling hills and trees we passed looked similar to roadside scenes along any Ontario highway. Of course, today we viewed these sights through a misty wash of spray from the huge semi trucks passing by. That mist, plus my right arm pointing to the right split we were supposed to take in order to stay on Interstate 40, prevented Val from seeing the road in the right rear-view mirror clearly enough to follow my earnestly-repeated direction.

This in turn prompted some rather earnest language from the driver as we were forced to veer left instead, heading for Chattanooga to the south rather than Nashville to the west! Even the GPS lady’s voice, with her “recalculating”, sounded a bit plaintive to my ears, as I clutched my delinquent arm to my chest. A short detour later, we were back on the I40, sloshing toward Harriman a few miles further along. The hotel was very easy to find and to get into with our big rig, so all was well again.

Not long after we settled into our room, the rain finally let up! As I gathered a few things from the trailer to bring inside, I actually heard a chorus of frogs croaking happily in swamp heaven. So some creatures think wet is wonderful.