Hillbilly Country

1 March 2013

Each day Kaleb is pumped up with more and more excitement as we get closer to home.  He’s been having a great time, but he really misses his friends.  It helps that he talked to one of them today on the phone.

We were up at 5am and driving by 6:00 in order to make our agenda for the day.  My destination is meeting up with my dad’s cousins in southern Missouri, but that had to wait a day as we took a massive detour in order to appease Kaleb.

When we started this road trip journey, Kory and Kaleb had a special father/son weekend to talk about “purity” and what the Bible says about how we treat our bodies.  Well, that weekend was supposed to include a special event, of the child’s choosing.  Kaleb wanted to go panning for gold, but Kory couldn’t find a creek in which to do it (a little advanced planning there would have helped).  Since Kaleb didn’t get that big activity, I suggested he take a rain check and go hunting for diamonds at a state park I remember visiting twenty years ago in Arkansas.  I failed to remember how far out of the way it was, however, so we drove over eight hours today to get there (at least four of them were in the opposite direction of my dad’s cousins.) 

Kaleb also had a deep desire to see the University of Memphis and the “Pyramid” (an abandoned sport’s stadium in Memphis- below) because they were mentioned in his favorite book series.  He wanted to see them in real life, not just visualize them from the written words.  I can appreciate that, so we took another detour off the freeway in order for him to see those two places.  He was a happy camper and we were happy to accommodate him.

On the way to the Craters of Diamonds State Park (above), Kory then mentioned that he’d really like to go by Hot Springs, Arkansas (below) and see about taking in the natural mineral baths at the bathhouses they have there.  We did that on our honeymoon, but again, it requires advanced planning.  If he would have told me yesterday, we could have gotten up just a little earlier in order to make it happen.  I told him so, but he whined so much about wanting to do it, we went ahead and took another diversion off the freeway to see if it was even possible.  Thankfully, it wasn’t.  If we had gone to the hot springs, Kaleb would have missed the diamond mining, so that settled it, but it also added about an hour of extra driving to our day.  We drove a lot today and now Kory is complaining that he’d like to add some sight seeing to our trip home.  Again, it would be helpful to know these things before plans get made.  He fails to comprehend just how intricately all these things are tied together – like hours in the day, when the sun comes up and when it gets dark.  Ugh.

Kaleb didn’t find any diamonds, that he knows of, but he did bring back a huge rock with all kinds of smaller rocks pressed in it, so he’ll be smashing that to bits once we get home.  He found some other really cool rocks though, so he still had a smile on his face when he came back to the RV. 

It’s just so odd there are diamonds in Arkansas, but I guess some guy discovered a bunch of them in his field and tried to set up a mining operation but it was too costly, so he gave it to the state and they let people dig for them.  I never imagined them just sitting in a field, but they are there.  In about 40 years there’s been over 30,000 found.  Kaleb was a bit disappointed he didn’t add to that number today, but he had a good time anyway.  Since this was supposed to be a father/son thing, I just stayed in the RV and took a nap with the sun shining in the window on my face.  It was decadent.

We are yet again in another Walmart parking lot for the night with another five hours of driving in the morning to get to my dad’s childhood home in southern Missouri.  We could have driven an hour farther in the twilight, but it’s a scenic road and I wanted to see it in the daylight, so it will wait for the morning.  We just went in to Walmart and bought a Three Stooges movie so Kory and Kaleb sat on the couch and cracked up for well over an hour watching that thing.  I fail to see the humor in people getting wacked on the head, but it sure tickles their funny bone.

Today we passed more chicken farms than I ever imagined were out there.  We also saw some signs worth noting – one of them informed us we were in the “catfish capital of the world” and another pointed the way to the “National Bird Dog Museum.”  That’s right up there with the National Coon Dog Cemetery in Alabama.  One of the roads we drove on was the “Buford Pusser Memorial Highway.”  What a name to live with, and then have it memorialized… what were they thinking?  In Tennessee, every bridge we went over was named in memory of someone, but not a single woman’s name was on any of them.  Shame on them.   And one pawn shop we passed had a huge sign out front that said, “Guns, Gold & Guitars.”  I guess we really are in the Ozarks.