Travels

A nice little cottage in Arkansas

We ventured off the farm and traveled to and from Arkansas earlier this week. 

Some thoughts about what we saw along the way...

I thought there was a lot of cotton around here. I was mistaken. The Mississippi delta has a lot of cotton.

Cotton farmers work on Sunday.

The HWY 82 bridge is far better than the HWY 49 bridge, which is a two freaking lane bridge across the freaking Mississippi River. According to my calculations using Google Earth, the distance across the river on 82 is 0.44 miles. On 49 it is 0.57. The difference may not seem like much to you, but trust me... . I will never cross on 49 again. Never. Even though it's one third of a mile longer, I'd sooner take the M bridge. (Plus, I'm pretty sure the ladies' room in the Conoco on the Mississippi side had cameras in the ceiling.)

Roundabouts are dumb. More on this later.

Roundabout related: College presidents in Arkansas wield too much power.

Quitman County (Mississippi) just didn't look all that poor to me. Jonestown, in Coahoma County, did.

And some questions... 


If they can grow tons of cotton in the delta, why don't folks have veggie gardens? We were on back roads traveling through tiny towns-- just collections of houses, really-- and I swear, I did not see a single garden patch. I know it's late in the season, maybe fall crops don't do well in the delta..., but I didn't see any signs of gardens. [I tried to find data on food stamps by county and came up with nothing other than that 39.9% of the population in Quitman County is below the poverty level.]

And on a lighter note, is it possible to over-do thematic decorating?

A bison-- for real