As much as we have enjoyed the (generally) fine warm/hot Houston weather and the times with our friends it is time to head on. There is lots to see yet. So, Sunday morning we headed north east hoping to bypass the major traffic areas of Houston but somehow our GPS decided we needed more of that and wanted to take us eastward almost parallel to I-10 through a maze of endless little malls etc etc toward I-45 before finally heading north. Sometimes you have to know better and to override the pigheadedness of the GPS! Eventually we were headed in the right general direction. We finally managed to escape the freeway and hit secondary highways, much nicer. We stopped in Palestine for lunch but found that the town virtually locks up on Sundays. Here the GPS helped us out as we searched for a restaurant and decided on the Pitt Grill, a greasy spoon kind of joint. VERY GREASY! However the food was not bad and we survived. After lunch we made our way about an hour north east to Rusk, our stop for the night at the KOA campground.
When checking in we asked if the pool was open. "Not yet; not until May 1, but if you don't mind the furniture not being set out and the water being very cold, you are welcome to give it a try"... well, we don't need to be told twice. It was a beautiful afternoon so after getting the wee trailer set up we headed over to the pool. By then, the park manager guy had decided he should be first in for the season so he was already in the pool, and complaining loudly about how cold it was. We thought he might be trying to dissuade us but no such luck. We just marched in and got wet. Many times we have been told "you Canadians will swim in anything!" and this was no exception. It was wonderful :-)
That night we awoke to a heavy downpour at about 3:00 AM (or maybe it was because we both had to go pee). It was raining so hard we opted to drive to the bath house which is attached to the main office building. The sky was alight with sheet lightening. When we got there the power went out so we had to prop the door open to allow the lightening to provide the illumination in the rest room. the KOA management couple and another couple of campers were in the office building and told us to come in. They asked "did you get woken by your phone weather alert as well?"... "no, we just had to go pee"... we all laughed about our bladders apparently being good (possible) tornado detectors. They had an app on their phone which provided a radar map of the weather system passing through the area and they were all awoken by an alert of possible tornado activity in the area. Apparently the possibility of a tornado was very real. We stayed in the main building (safest place around, they said) for about an hour and a half until the system passed by. No tornado this time. Back to bed but at around 6:30 AM we were awoken again, this time by heavy winds rocking the wee trailer but it died down quite quickly. So it looks like we were a bit on the lucky side. We were able to sleep a couple more hours.
Monday morning when we got up there was a fair amount of debris (branches etc) around the campground. Still no power by about 10:00 AM, so we packed up and hit the road. We headed north to Tyler to stop in at Stanley's Famous Pit Bar-B-Que where we had a fantastic 4 meat plate lunch (ribs, brisket, sausage, turkey) with a couple of sides...
...We ended up ordering more to take away for dinner. Some of the best BBQ we have ever had. Our stop for the night was the KOA at Texarkana right on the Texas/Arkansas border. In fact State Street is the border. The two southbound lanes are in Texas and the two northbound lanes are in Arkansas. The lady at the KOA told us to not have an accident in the center turning lane because it can take a while to sort out who should respond (that sounded very silly!).
We decided the weather situation last night was justification for us to get a USA sim card and account for one of our iPhones so that we could get a weather alert app for safety sakes. When we got to Texarkana we went into a Walmart where we purchased an AT&T pay as you go (monthly) talk, text and data plan. Would you believe that my (Brian's) BRAND SPANKING NEW VISA CARD got rejected???? Walmart is one of the few places, in the USA, where we have seen the chip technology, so we used that and the card got accepted. Half an hour later I tried the car at a Shell station to get some gas.... REJECTED!!! So back at the KOA we use our spiffy new AT&T account on the iPhone to call VISA in Canada to find out what is going on. Sure enough, their automated security system put a block on the card. Buddy was not able to tell us why, although he said gas stations are very suspicious, but said he would unblock the card with no guarantees that it wouldn't happen again. I said that we use Kris's card all the time for gas and no issues. For dinner we ate more, but didn't finish, the BBQ we had bought earlier in the day at Stanley's. Kris then tried our new phone to call Marion in Vancouver. Works much better than the Tracfone for calls to Canada.
Tuesday we decided, since having never previously set foot in Arkansas, we would take back roads (secondary highways at best) north east to Hot Springs. Man, there are some boonies in this state. We were out in the middle of no-where for a good part of the day. That said, sometimes the back roads bring very pleasant surprises. We stopped in the little village of Washington in Hempstead county (try finding that on a map). The entire village (population about 200) is actually a state park named Historic Washington State Park and is one of America's premier historic villages. We spent about 3 hours in a few of the buildings open to the public (different buildings are open on different days), had nice chats with the guides and had an excellent fried pork chop lunch in one of the historic taverns. Found out that the town was established on George Washington's birthday in 1824. Around the town there are numerous huge magnolia trees, one with the claim of being the oldest in the state, having been planted in 1839...
... apparently it used to also claim to be the largest but a few years back a heavy snowstorm took out a portion of the top of it. Very interesting place to visit.... and we would never have known about it if we hadn't driven down that one specific back country road. Nice.
We arrived late afternoon at Catherine's Landing at Hot Springs RV resort. After getting checked in and set up we headed into Hot Springs to find one of the 3 Bank of America locations identified by our GPS. Turns out that Arvest Bank bought out all three locations in the last year or so and our GPS doesn't know about it yet. So, we'll wait until we get to Memphis before getting some more cash. For dinner we checked out McClard's BBQ in Hot Springs. It is mentioned in our BBQ bible as a good place to try and it definitely did not disappoint. Very good ribs but sliced beef brisket was a bit dry, however their sauces were particularly good and their sides (potato salad and slaw) were also good. We ended up with enough for take away for lunch Wedneday...
On Wednesday we decided to just straight line it, east on I-30 and I-40 to Memphis Tennessee. We stopped at a highway rest stop to finish off our left over BBQ. Nice lunch. About 2:00 PM we arrived at the Tom Sawyer's Mississippi River RV park in West Memphis (still in Arkansas) where we checked in for 3 nights. This place is right on the banks of the Mississippi River and is on a flood plain. Here's what we see from where our trailer is...
.... and a couple of hundred yards "up the hill" behind us is a bath house with the record flood level marked (unbelievable - but true) ...
A couple of hours later we headed into downtown Memphis (across the river in Tennessee, about 15 minutes away) to check out famous Beale Street (America's Most Iconic Street - USA Today)...
We found a parking meter just off Beale but parking is allowed only until 6:00 PM. It was only just after 4:00 so we parked there for a couple of hours as we wandered the few blocks of activity on Beale. Three or four blocks pedestrian only with mostly live music pouring out of every second door at least. Our first stop was Handy Park where we watch a free open air performance...
... we don't know who the performer was but he appeared to be well known to the crowd not to mention well appreciated. Excellent. We continued our wandering along Beale. All too soon it came time to move the car. We decided to stay downtown a while longer but parking was difficult to find as the Memphis Grizzlies (NBA) were in a home playoff game so parking was a bit of a valuable commodity. We lucked out and found a small lot just a block off Beale. It was a private company lot but they leased it out in the evening to Republic Parking who charged only $10 for the evening. Plus their guy was there all the time so it was like having your car personally looked after. Back on Beale, we decided to try BB King's Blues Club for some dinner and music. For a $3 cover we ended up sitting at a rail overlooking the band. We had the pleasure of watching Blind Mississippi Morris perform...
... dinner was a cheeseburger and some very spicy wings, along with a couple of glasses of pretty good wine, but we were really only there for the music.That part was outstanding. We bought one of his CDs. He finished his act a little after 8:00 so we decided to pack it in at that time as well. The street scene outside was pretty cool...
A great introduction to Memphis.
Thursday we figured it was time to try Memphis BBQ since, after all, that was the real reason we came through Memphis. We pulled out our BBQ bible and decided to try the Cozy Corner BBQ for lunch, Now if you look at their website you can see that the place looks a little on the "divey side". That's ok... usually a sign of good food happening. But when we got there it was closed with a big sign pointing across the street to a very modern, non-descript looking little building. Hmmm, hope that doesn't mean a drop in BBQ quality. However we soon found out that they had to re-locate due to a fire in January but they were still serving up their same menu. The ribs and rib ends were absolutely fabulous. The beans and slaw were pretty good too. No disappointment there. We got there just before noon and were no sooner sitting at a table than the lineup grew very quickly. Clearly a very popular spot with locals. After lunch we drove over to Sun Studio, the birth place of Rock and Roll. We got there just after 12:30 and were too late for that tour so had to wait until the 1:00 PM tour. Fantastic tour. Recommended. The guide, Jason Freeman, is also a recording musician. We bought his latest CD "Hex & Hell". Sweet! After the tour it was still early in the afternoon so we stopped at a Kroger's to pick up some groceries and the fixings to make ourselves some fruit smoothies back at the wee trailer. Delicious. Late afternoon we headed back to Beale Street for some more music. We found a spot to park in the same place as last night. Nice...We chose BB King's again as they had good seating at the bar (we were only there for the music and some wine on this night), where we saw Preston Shannon, aka "The King of Beale Street"....
....Another excellent evening of music.
Friday it was time to try another BBQ joint. This time we chose Corky's on the far east side of the city. Took a while to get there but, wow, was it worth the drive. Brian had a "small" (if there is such a thing in these parts) rack of dry rub ribs while Kris opted for a pulled pork salad....
... another most excellent meal. That will do us for the day! After lunch we picked up some more smoothie fixings, back to the trailer and time to do some laundry and trailer vacuuming. Late afternoon we headed back to Beale Street for one last evening of music before we move on. We had heard about "Memphis in May" starting with a music festival this weekend but we were a tad unprepared for the crowds. Driving down to Beale Street, there were so many people out and about, it seemed like we were unlikely to find a parking spot anywhere close. $20 parking lots, that were not there the last two days, sprung up easily 15 or more blocks from where we wanted to go. We lucked out! The same parking place we used the last two nights had one spot left and we were right across the street from the top of Beale Street and BB Kings Blues Club. The street was packed with people so we opted to just head into BB's again as a line was starting to form. This time a $5 cover charge and we lucked out again snagging seats right in front of the stage. We hung around for 2 bands, the first was Will Tucker...
... excellent, and the second was Ori Naftaly and man, was that band good...
... We went home almost deaf but what a great time. Thank you Memphis !!!!!
Saturday we packed up and headed southeast through the corner of Tennessee into Mississippi then Alabama where we stopped in Tuscumbia for the night at Heritage Acres RV Park. As a side note, it would be interesting to know how Good Sam goes about rating restrooms. The ones at Tom Sawyer's in Memphis were rated 10; the ones at Heritage Acres were rated 9 but were, frankly, 10 times nicer than the ones at Tom Sawyer's and did not run out of hot water in the showers!
Anyway, the reason we stopped in this area was for Kris to visit Alabama Chanin, "a lifestyle company producing well designed and thoughtfully made goods for the person and home using 100% cotton jersey fabric in our design, sourced sustainably from seed to fabric". A true "Made in America" company committed to paying their workers a living wage. To boot, they have a very nice restaurant. We arrived there at about 1:50 PM to find that the restaurant closes at 2:00 PM but they displayed the usual southern hospitality and told us that we were well in time to have a meal; we both had the quiche and it was very good. Kris had a good look around their store front and their fabric area (the factory part was not open to visitors) and ended up buying some beautiful fabric that will become shirts when we get home.
Later in the afternoon we drove around the area and went to downtown Florence, where one of the ladies at Alabama Chanin had recommended a few shops, one of them being Trowbridge's Ice Cream. While in a clothing store downtown we got chatting with a couple of the young staff members. They also highly recommended Trowbridge's with one young fellow telling us how his grand parents had their first date in a booth there. Maybe we sat in the same booth! Sweet place and very nice ice cream. Great end to the week.
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