Adventures in Arkansas 2004

Alan and I had an unintended adventure one time on a trip to Arkansas to visit my grandmother. We were running later than planned and it was getting dark, so we decided to stay in a hotel overnight about 2 hours away from our destination. The first hotel we went to was in West Memphis, Arkansas. West Memphis is right across the Mississippi River from Memphis, Tennessee. Unfortunately, the hotel had no vacancies. They told us there was some big convention in Memphis, so all the hotels in Memphis were booked up, and West Memphis got the overflow. They were very nice, though. They called another Holiday Inn in Forrest City, about 20 miles away, off our regular route, and got us a reservation for the night. 

On our way to Forrest City we ran into a traffic jam on a 2-lane country road. The line of cars was so long we couldn't see what was causing it. There was no traffic coming from the opposite direction, either. We figured it must be a car wreck that was blocking both lanes. 

We sat there for quite a while not moving. But every once in a while a pickup truck would go past us on the shoulder of the road. We thought they were probably just trying to get to the front of the line.

Finally, though, Alan decided to follow one of those trucks and see where they were going. So we pulled out behind the next truck that went by on the shoulder. 

We hadn't gone far when the truck made a sudden right turn into a field! We followed his tail lights, which wasn't easy since he was kicking up a cloud of dust on the little trail that snaked through the field -- and he was going fast! It was pitch dark -- so if we lost sight of his tail lights we would be totally lost. At one point we went flying over a rickety wooden 'bridge' (in the loosest sense of the word) that was just about wide enough for a car. I don't know why there was a bridge in the middle of a cotton field, but we were in no condition to wonder about that. (I don't know if it was a cotton field or some other kind of field, but it was huge.) We just tried to keep up with the cloud of dust and hope it would lead us eventually to wherever all those other trucks had gone. (I began to think the guy we were following might just be going to his house, and we would end up having to spend the night with him and wait for daylight to find our way back.)

Well, we did finally come to the end of the trail and back onto the road. We could see some flashing red and blue lights off to our left, and there was still no traffic moving in either direction. So we were past the obstruction and were able to continue on to our hotel, thankful that we lived to tell the tale! 

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These are not pictures of the actual event, of course. They are just random photos I chose to illustrate the story.