157,000 Walmarts

One of this year’s category of Challenges is getting 5 Moss Motors Distributors. I combed through the 273 addresses of them in the 20 states we are visiting on the trip to see if we were driving anywhere near them. The big winners were 2 cities in VA and one in MO. We took pictures of all 4 in Virginia and used 3, the other one was just a couple of garage doors and a regular front door with the three digit address.

Because we already had one in the bag from the June trip to Moss Motors, we only needed to get one of the two that were located in Springfield, Missouri. We followed our GPS and it zigged and zagged us through north Springfield’s industrial area before leading us right to the first one. We took the picture just in case for some reason we couldn’t locate number two, the one we really wanted. Swope Automotive is owned by a fellow named Tom Swope who was the 2nd place finisher in last year’s Motoring Challenge. We were kind of hoping he would be open and not off chasing Challenge points like us. We pulled in and the OPEN sign was flashing – cool. The door was locked and the little sign with hours had Closed next to Saturday and Sunday. Oh, well, at least we did get the picture we wanted.

We are spending the night in Bentonville, Arkansas which is the home of Walmart. This means there is a Walmart or Sam’s Club on every street corner in town for a total of 157,000 locations in a place with only 40,000 residents. Sometime just before crossing into Kansas from Missouri the Emperor passed the 157K mile mark.

After a week of averaging 282 miles a day we are taking a break by spending 2 nights here in Bentonville. So we don’t lose our edge, we are treating tomorrow like the cyclists do on a rest day during the Tour de France, we will go for a shorter drive. Probably drive a 100 mile loop and visit Eureka Springs.