Arkansas, Texas

We left my parents house on Thursday morning, expecting a long 8-hour day in the car but ending up with an extra long, miserable, 10-hour day in the car including two hours of stand-still traffic. My phone kept giving me friendly updates like, "This route has a four-hour delay" and "Give up now. You are never going to reach your destination, and even if you do, you will want to kill yourself and the small people in the car with you." Thanks, Galaxy!

Despite the long drive, Hot Springs, Arkansas was wonderful. I would love to go back and camp there longer. Heading in to Arkansas from Kentucky, the terrain was reminiscent of Kansas but gradually turned into low, wooded mountains and lakes. Who knew Arkansas could be so beautiful!

From our campground at Gulpha Gorge, it was a 1.5 mile hike to the bathhouses in Hot Springs. We toured the visitor's center, earned Junior Ranger badges (all three boys), and plunged hands into the 110 degree water (Eli).

From Arkansas, we drove to Dallas/Fort Worth to spend a couple days at my cousin's house. Originally, I'd planned to go to the Dallas zoo, but since the forecast was 98 degrees, we opted to spend the day in their neighborhood pool instead.



As the lone driver on this epic journey, I have spent a lot of time thinking about plants and landscapes and hills and horizons, and one definite conclusion that I came to was that I would go crazy living in Texas (or at least the parts of the state I drove through). The land is too flat and the trees are too short (when there are trees at all). The horizon is so far away and the sky is too huge. It's creepy. But I do like the windmills.

Also, Texas, let's talk about your gas station situation. Before we left, my dad told me about a time when he drove through west Texas and nearly ran out of gas because the distance between gas stations is so long. I thought, "Well, I have a hybrid. I can go 550 miles on a tank of gas. I'll be fine." Mid-afternoon on the day we drove through Texas, we stopped at a gas station to take a potty break and get a snack, and since my tank was still half full, I thought, "I'll wait to the next station to refill."

Big mistake! When we pulled into our campground in New Mexico, my odometer estimated that I could only drive 65 miles before I'd run out of gas, and Google maps said the nearest gas station was still 35 more miles away. In all, we drove 135 miles without seeing a gas station. I have never been quite so stressed out in my entire life!