This Is What I’ve Got
SNAPSHOTS
Oh My Memphis BBQ
One thing Kendrick and I both had on our shortlist of Must-Dos: eat Memphis BBQ. I googled and consulted my Road Trip America book and Twitter-sourced, and what we ultimately decided on was the chicken and ribs at Interstate BBQ.
The place is not pretty. It looks kind of like a run-down fast-food joint, and is located right off of (like, basically on top of) the interstate (hence the name). The plates could have come straight out of a 1980s cafeteria, and the service, while friendly, is very much in the "whaddya want?" vein.
But OH MY FOOD. We made our picks based on Yelp reviews, and ended up with pork ribs, a half chicken, potato salad, beans, coleslaw, a side of BBQ spaghetti (which is what it sounds like: spaghetti tossed with slow-cooked pork and BBQ sauce), and fountain sodas the size of basketballs. And we ate (and drank) it all, and our son said "MMM THIS IS DELICIOUS!" over and over and over. (Weirdly, you want to know what my favorite part was? The coleslaw. And I don't particularly like coleslaw, so this both makes no sense and speaks to some kind of weird sorcery happening with however they make their coleslaw in this place.)
The ‘Villes
First of all, let me show you where we are right now: sitting at the breakfast bar in a hotel in an Arkansas town called "Lonoke" that may very well have been the setting for The Shining. (The hotel is actually very nice in the morning, but last night, when we were wandering the hallways looking for our room: totally kept an eye out for Redrum.)
We didn't mean to be here, exactly (although it's a very pretty part of the world) - what happened was that we stopped just outside of Memphis for dinner (more on that later because oh my godddd), with the plan to just wing it and find a place to sleep on the outskirts of town...and then our kids both fell asleep. Instantly. And what I have learned from this trip so far is that if the kids need to nap, let 'em nap; if everyone feels like getting out of the car and running around in a parking lot, go ahead and do that, even if it makes you arrive somewhere an hour later than you'd hoped. Just go with it. The destinations are less important than the journey, you know?
And so we decided to get a head-start on the next day's drive while the kids were sleeping and find a place to stay somewhere in between Memphis and Arkansas National Park, and then discovered that these "places to stay"? They're like an hour away from each other around here. And all of them, inexplicably, are completely booked up (presumably by people like us who were all "oh I'll just find somewhere to sleep tonight"...and then realized that there would be nowhere else to sleep for two hundred miles so they better get a room like now).
In The Colony
Williamsburg!
First of all, the colonial part - the section of town that's a completely preserved colonial village, complete with people wandering around in full era costumes and horses and vendors selling lemon soap (which I totally bought, because it was the best-smelling thing EVER) and slate boards - is really very cool. We had Ploughman's lunches and pulled pork sandwiches at the Dog Street Pub, and then wandered around for a couple of hours climbing on trees and such.
And then we went to an old-fashioned candy shop, and of all the amazingly delicious-looking things available to him, what Indy decided he wanted to buy a lollipop with a bug in it. A scorpion, specifically. Which my son (enthusiastically) and then my husband (reluctantly, and only because he was on the receiving end of a triple dog dare, and everyone knows that you don't turn down triple dog dares)...ate. Like, the scorpion part of it. They ate it.
The Long Stretch
OK, so yesterday - Day 1 of our road trip - was not the most exciting day, but we knew that going into it. First, I was pretty certain I was going to cry when we drove away from my parents, and: yes. A lot. (When you are sad and on a road trip, Java Chip Frappuccinos help. Just FYI.)
Our goal was to just get a bunch of miles under our belts right away both because we're not murderously tired of being in the car yet, and because we wanted to get to Virginia ASAP to maximize the time we could spend with Kendrick's sister and her family. The only place that we passed during the 8-hour drive that I would have liked to stop at was Atlantic City, but on the bright side, that little omission probably saved us about two hundred bucks at the blackjack table.
As good as our kids are in cars, this was one of the longest stretches of straight driving we've planned (most days are more like 3-4 hours), so I was a little nervous, but it went well, mostly because the point was just Get There Without Melting Down. Pretty much the most exciting thing that happened was that we stopped at Olive Garden (which was actually pretty exciting for me, because I have never been before in my life - and while that may may sound weird to those of you who aren't from NYC, it's important to know that in New York the only Olive Garden is located in Times Square and is insanely expensive and a terrible idea, given that there are zillions of much cheaper Italian food options approximately five yards away).
The big discovery at Olive Garden: they give your children stickers that - as one reader helpfully pointed out - strongly resemble sperm.
