What's she got to grin?: Rewind!

Sunday morning, Knoxville, TN - we wake up early and get ready to leave our comfy room at the Hampton Inn. We hit the road intending to reach Oklahoma City by nightfall. TN is a pretty state...

but it's really not all THAT different from sme places in MA, right? I think we were on the road all of 45 minutes before a state trooper pulled us over. He was the nicest cop I have ever heard and fittingly, his name was "Officer Jolley". John had been speeding (85 in a 70). He was not nice enough to NOT give us a ticket though...

John was not pleased...$149 down the drain. We decided it was no big deal and put the ticket away and resumed driving. I think he set the cruise at 73 or something at that point.

Next major landmark - Nashville, TN. We didn't stop, we just drove through.

It's a pretty city. We liked the building with the spikes. :) Just past Nashville was this giant cross peeking out from the trees...

It was really pretty.

The next 200 miles or so were pretty boring, scenery-wise. Nothing really to photograph untl we hit Memphis. I snapped a pic of this building, which I believe is an arena...

Then we crossed the Mississippi and entered Arkansas simultaneously!

Arkansas. What can I say about Arkansas? There is a whole lot of NOTHING in Eastern Arkansas. It is flat, there are farms, irrigation ditches, farms and also farms. Did I mention farmland? Arkansas' one redeeming quality is its Western half. There is some really pretty terrain over there. We saw a family of deer...oh, and farms. The sky however, was gorgeous!! Check it...

There were storms coming...but the sun was breaking through the clouds and the beams were just so defined. It was so pretty.

We did have to take a quick detour through Little Rock

...typical.

Sunday, late afternoon, we are headed for Oklahoma and we know there are storms in our path but John insists he's not worried and we'll be fine, so we continue onward. Apparently, John did not learn his lesson because he got pulled over for doing 80 in a 70 this time. Luckily, we got another nice officer and whether it was because he also was driving a Charger, or he was in a good mood, or he got a call for an accident up the road - he only gave John a warning. We were pleased about that but John was upset because I was picking on him.

Hahah...I made him pose for this one.

It was dark as we were entering Oklahoma and about halfway to Oklahoma City, I started seeing some crazy lightning off to the north. We are heading West on I-40, so I hoped that maybe the storms were passing just north of us. Well -I was WRONG! My sister-in-law was texting me asking me where we were...and telling me that bad storms were headed our way. We continued to drive and then it hit us all of a sudden. The sky was black, the lightning was long and furious, the rain was hitting the window and splattering to the size of saucers. The wind was 40-50mph constant gusting and then the hail came. It was small hail, didn't cause any damage to the car, but it was scary nonetheless. I had the weather band playing on the handheld cb radio we have and they were talking about tornado watches everywhere. It was the most amazing and terrifying storm I have seen in my life and let it be said that Oklahoma did not disappoint! Other side of the city - it rained for a bit and the gusts continued all the way in to Texas, where the snow started. We made it most of the way to Amarillo before we encountered a stand-still. It was only a few trucks and a couple of cars so we plowed through the median and got on the parallel highway (Route 66) to try to find a way around. Turned out a U-Haul had rolled in the middle of the road and two 18-wheelers crashed trying to avoid it. We were driving down back roads as strong winds sent blinding sheets of snow across our path. Finally, 230am, we find our way into the city.

We got a room at the Sleep Inn...which at one time had been a favorite hotel of mine because the others in which I had stayed were really clean and nice. This one was a DUMP! We got stuck with a smoking room, one queen size bed with a nasty bedspread!

I am never staying at a Sleep Inn again.

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Monday morning we leave the hotel and head to Sonic for some grub. While we were there, some little birdies came along and let me take their pictures!

They were so good, I fed them some tots!

I am not sure how they usually handle snow, but this time, they did not put any sand or salt on the roads and as a result, people were crashing:

...and then there was traffic...

I didn't mind so much, because it gave me a chance to snap some nice pics of the scenery. Let me tell you - the western half of the Texas panhandle is some of the most beautiful, serene land I have ever seen. It was just peaceful as can be.

I would really love to live there. It made me happy.