1,000 is a lot of miles. Due to the unfortunate lack of an iPod this trip is turning into a sort of musical exploration. I've discovered that about the only thing that comes in on the radio in Kentucky is banjo music (i.e. bluegrass) and that they really do play the blues in Memphis. Not all stereotypes are confirmed though, West Virginia has a radio station that apparently plays nothing but Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam, and there's a station somewhere between Memphis and Little Rock that plays mixed industrial house. Besides that, in case nobody else noticed, pretty much every Led Zeppelin song ever recorded is about the Lord of the Rings, go figure. Speaking of stereotypes, New Jersey should take a lesson from Kentucky and just paint their welcome sign on the side of one of the sludge factories in Newark.

I dove south to sneak under the snowstorm and wound up getting hammered with one of those "I can't see the front of my own car nevermind the back of the car in front of me" monsoons while trying to navigate the convoluted border between Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, and Arkansas. I actually pulled over at one point to see if I had a flat tire because the car was dragging so bad, then I realized it was just fighting 60MPH headwinds with 3 inches of water on the road. Slow going for a while but the skies look clear now, still a bit windy though.

I'm wimping out and spending the night in a motel near the Oklahoma border. My original plan was to camp out in the Ozarks tonight but I need to cover miles and I'm not going to be able to do that if I'm tromping around the woods with a tent. There will be plenty of time to sleep out in the cold after tomorrow. It has been frustrating constantly changing highways trying to work my way south and west. The other trips I've taken out west started with "get on I-70 west and drive until you hit mountains". All this stairstepping I've been doing to get down south makes it seem like I'm wasting miles. I'm finally on I-40 though and if I can pull another 1,000 mile day it will put me in striking distance of the Grand Canyon for Monday

Tags: Road Trips