Road Trip

Tickling Oklahoma

State - Oklahoma

Day 5: Hope, AR to Fort Worth, TX – 338.0 miles*
We drove in from Arkansas, spent less than 17 miles driving on Oklahoma’s roads and then back out into Texas. We are “fair weather cachers”, so today’s rain would have normally kept us from even venturing out. But we are a 1,000 miles from home on our way through this part of the country and don’t know when we will be back, so we had to make at least one find here in Arkansas and one in Oklahoma. We did and this added another 2 states to our growing list of state’s where we have found only one cache. Our one trick wonders now stand at 9 of the 29 US states we have cached in.

Highlight of the day was our visit to Paris, TX. From the totally ridiculous replica Eiffel Tower with a giant red cowboy hat on top to the sublime lunch at Burgerland.

*Pre-drive Google Maps estimate: 310 (-28.0) – Total miles so far: 1466.3

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1341

Why We Went This Way

County - Quitman

Day 4: Batesville, MS to Hope, AR – 306.5 miles*
The reason we traveled through this part of Mississippi and stayed in Batesville was because just a hip and a skip down the road was Quitman County. As in the game of Scrabble, in the Moss Motoring Challenge the proper use of the letter Q is important. There is a town beginning with the letter Q in Mississippi too, Quitman, on the other side of the state, but we will miss it on the return trip. Not too much of a problem though as there is a Quinby in South Carolina about a 100 miles from home which we’ll get later.

The letter Q county was my main consideration for coming this way, but Donna noticed that there as a county called Sunflower on our route, so just because of that name, it will replace the recently nabbed Swain County as our S entry. We drove about 50 miles through the middle of Sunflower County and didn’t see a single sunflower.

Also in Sunflower County we stumbled on a Destination that we had been long mulling over how to get, a Jail or Prison. Turns out we were going to pass right by the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman. I pulled the Miata into a sort of lane for pulling in to the gate of the prison, Donna held up the challenge cover page near the windshield and I snapped a couple pictures. We didn’t dare get out of the car and try any posing because we were already getting the evil eye from the guards at the gate.

*Pre-drive Google Maps estimate: 290 (-16.5) – Total miles so far: 1128.3

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1339

All Shook Up

Sneak Peek 2B

Day 3: Huntsville, AL to Batesville, MS – 252.2 miles*

Some of today’s drive and quite a bit of tomorrow’s will be on US278 which is the same road that travels south of Aiken and we take to drive to Hilton Head. The stretch between Oxford and Batesville was a four lane divided highway. The westbound lanes which we were using were made up of that annoying asphalted over 20 foot sections of concrete slabs that make the Miata go bump-bump, bump-bump, bump-bump rhythmically until you just want to be driving any other road.

Today’s photo will probably used as our second Sneak Peek image for the March to June time frame. Can you guess what this is of? Hint number one is that it is in a town called Tupelo. Hint #2 is that a King was born here. The title of the post is the third hint. Got it?

Other photos taken today were 2 cities, an H & an M, another National Forest and a state spelled em eye ess ess eye ess ess eye pee pee eye.

We have had kind of a running theme going, but unfortunately tomorrow it comes to a halt, we will not be staying in a town whose name ends in -ville. Instead our destination is the town of Hope, Arkansas, where another American King was born.

*Pre-drive Google Maps estimate: 220 (-32.2) – Total miles so far: 821.8

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1337

139,000 Curves

Ider Public Library

Day Two: Rob­binsville, NC to Huntsville, AL. – 263.7 miles*
We were going to use the lovely Aiken County Public Library, in Our Fair City, for the Motoring Challenge because it is a lovely old building from 1890 that used to be the town’s high school. But today when we exited I-59 just inside the the Alabama line to start our back road drive to Huntsville and stopped at a quick stop to get some cold drinks, we knew that that was going to change.

As I pulled into park, I stayed to the right, to stop in front of the little strip shopping center away from the gas pumps and any other cars. Donna looked and noticed that we were right in front of the town’s library, we knew right away this was going to be our library photo. And to add icing to the cake, 10 seconds after we pulled to a stop, a small red pickup truck parked right next to us. The passenger door opened and a guy got out just so he could let the middle seat passenger could get out to go into the quick stop. Then he got back in and the driver hopped out to go inside too. After just having been in downtown Chattanooga with its young hipsters, these deep down southerners were quite the culture shock.

If you are ever in downtown Chattanooga, perhaps going to the Tennessee Aquarium, and it is lunchtime, walk across the pedestrian only Walnut Street Bridge to the northshore area and find TACO•nooga. Both Donna and I can personally recommend the Carnita Tacos. While you are there, order a Coke and you will get a bottle imported from Mexico where they still use real cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup.

Four points for the Motoring Challenge today; one state, Alabama and three destinations, Aquarium, Library and Botanical Gardens.

The Emperor passed through the 139,000 mile mark just outside Etowah, Tennessee.

*Pre-drive Google Maps estimate: 240 (-23.7) – Total miles so far: 569.6

Started up, went down, back up, down again, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1335

42,000 Bits Of Metal

Metal Dragon

Day One: Aiken, SC to Robbinsville, NC. – 305.9 miles*
This dragon, that is made up of about 42,000 metal pieces and vehicle parts, sits right outside a relatively new souvenir stand that has popped up just across the street from the original, more motorcycle oriented, souvenir place, at the junction of NC28 & US129 near the start of The Tail of the Dragon.

As I guessed Thursday, by washing the car then, I pretty much guaranteed that the 30% chance of rain we were traveling through today, would 100% fall on us. We had to put the top up just about the time the roads started to get all bent and crooked when it is the most fun to have it down, but it was no real disappointment as it was not raining hard enough to make us put the windows up at all times, so we still got to enjoy the cool mountain air and dulcet tones of exhausting waste gases of burnt gasoline.

The sun did come out long enough after dinner here in Robbinsville to allow a quick run up to the beginning of Deals Gap to capture the Welcome to Tennessee and Welcome to North Carolina signs. As a bonus we also snapped a photo of the Swain (NC) County sign that was steps away from the state sign. This brought our total Moss Motoring points for the day to 10 with the 1 other county, 3 cities, a National Forest, a waterfall and the above photo which will be used for one of this quarter’s Bonus Points.

We drove the Sonata to work on Friday and when I got behind the wheel I realized that the odometer read 42006. Because we had been driving the Emperor to and from the Valve Store(tm) the rest of the week, I couldn’t recall on which day those six miles occurred, oh well, let’s call the 7th of May as the date the Purple Whale ran past the 42,000 mile mark.

*Pre-drive Google Maps estimate: 239 (-66.9) – Total miles so far: 305.9

Started down, went up, went down, back up, down again, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1331

138,000 Seconds Too Late

We have a North Carolina road map, but it is dated 2007, so we thought it might be a good idea to update it this trip and because of the way we were driving up we had an opportunity to cross into the Tar Heel State via I-85. So we planned to pop into the official Welcome Center grab a new map and also take the NC state photo for the Motoring Challenge.

As we cruised into the rest area the state name was on the back of the building, so we figured there would be a nice sign in the front. We were wrong. There is a wood sign that is too far from the parking lot to be seen well and it also had wood letters spelling out North Carolina Welcome Center above the front door, but it too could not be captured photographically. We then struck out on the map front too as we were about a half hour too late, they lock the doors at 5:30 PM.

We did manage to manage to successfully grab three other challenge photos on the trip to Statesville, a County, a National Forest and a Destination:

A little north of Kings Mountain, NC the Emperor passed the 138,000 mile mark this afternoon.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1315

The King’s Donuts

The King's Donuts

Took a 400 mile road trip to Fairburn, GA today to go get a doughnut. And to see a friend who recently bailed from working at the Valve Store(tm) to become the COO and head baker of a Christian doughnut shop called The King’s Donuts. Yesterday was their soft opening and they sold out of doughnuts by mid-afternoon. We were there for about an hour and there was a steady stream of customers the whole time. Just before we left at 4:30 he gave us a tour of the kitchen and there were only 3 mostly filled trays of wares left to sell.

We took the long way there on the back roads to get a couple more of our Moss Motoring Challenge objectives:

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1309