Day 6 – Into the blue…

Not sure what my preconceptions were of Arkansas and Little Rock in particular but they were none too favourable. We drive out to Argenta, a district of Little Rock for breakfast. My vague, unspecified preconceptions were plain wrong. From what I saw of Little Rock it’s a modern, leafy, green and extremely well kept capital (sorry capitol) city. Very nice indeed. Argenta is full of trendy, artisan type places and even has a tram system.

We breakfast in the Mugs Café, well named as it turns out. No waitress service, miserable staff, small arty breakfasts that come out in the wrong order and tables you clear yourself. I can’t see anything I like. While certainly not being a disciple of the “5 a day” (or is it 7 now?) I actually find myself desperately missing fruit and vegetables so I order the fruit and Greek yoghurt combo. Eventually I get some cut up apple and some cut up, good looking, but utterly tasteless strawberries. It all gets consumed; seemed like a good idea at the time but I’m not sure my gut wholeheartedly agrees but I suck it up - it must be doing some good, hopefully. They double up as a church on Saturdays, had arty stuff on the walls and were playing the Arctic Monkeys so that makes it alright. Head off to Starbucks to commence Operation Degrumpification and I say hello to a cute pussy cat that doesn't appear to understand my accent.

Glenn bemoans the state of the USA. Postings on Facebook about what’s wrong with the US political system go without reply. A photo of his feet taken in his hotel room has so far attracted 32 “likes” and counting. “That just about sums it up” says Glenn.

We’re heading south east on I30 through a green tunnel of forest towards Texarkana which is a couple of hours drive away. The weather is somewhat strange; they’re having record low seasonal temperatures in Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska and we’ve got blue sky and not much to do in the way of chasing. There’s talk of heading to Shreveport, Louisiana at some point and why not?

A quick pit stop at Hope which transpires is the birthplace of President Clinton and we’re back on the road. We might have a trip to Dallas tomorrow, grassy knoll and so on.

We drop into Leslie and Lisa’s Granary St. Health Food Store in Texarkana; they’ve got more aisles of stuff than you can possibly imagine. I buy a couple of things amounting to just less than $10 and rather embarrassingly I pay for it with the 3KG of shrapnel. They’ve also got The Yarn Garden next door which specialises in natural fibres including Alaskan Qibiut yarn which would set you back $100 a roll. It is lovely and soft…but I decline to buy any.

Texarkana straddles the Texas/Arkansas border and there is a place you can stand with a foot in each state. We don’t go there…Their stores are on the Texas side so that counts as state number 11. We go to Spring Lake Park for our first picnic of the week which says something about the weather as we’re on day 6. Due to popular demand my fellow travellers insist on hearing first-hand the infamous tick incident from 2012. In my usual understated style I present an abridged version of what happened that fateful day in Nebraska. Glenn, so moved by my performance decides to video it and shares it with his 800 Facebook friends…

Lisa and Leslie very kindly offer to stay in the back of the Suburban so I’m fairly comfortable in the middle seats unlike poor David who is suffering badly with Canadian Death Flu which I fear is permeating the rest of the crew. We then head south on US71 towards Shreveport and I break out my virgin map of Texas;  my Northern Plains map remains unused, desperately wishing it had been a South East USA map. We cross into Louisiana which, with an increasing indifference, is added to the list as state number 12. We reach Shreveport and crack on west on the I20 into Texas passing junction 635; this is one long road.

There might be a few bits and bobs bubbling up later, there certainly isn’t now.  We’re booked into the Days Inn at Terrell just east of Dallas. Looks like tomorrow we will head on early to Dallas to have a look at the JFK stuff, with a last hurrah towards the Oklahoma Pan Handle or Colorado tomorrow  a further 6 hours away followed by a 4 hour drive back to base at Oklahoma City; I'm feeling stiff at the thought of it but that's the deal with storm chasing. That’s a long day which will be subject to review in the morning. The day finishes with a nice brisket at Hickory BBQ Roots and add some green beans to my health kick. I also find out that BYOB stands for "Bring Your Own Booze" so a diet coke it has to be as I hadn't brought any!

Day 6 – Total miles: 397