Road trip! Springfield to Fairhope

Last Christmas, I gave you my heart. But that's not important right now. I went home to Missouri, and made a whirlwind trip through Georgia, to see friends and family. About half of my family lives in Mobile, Alabama, which was just too far away for me to make it. I've been meaning to see them ever since.

After visiting Glendale on Wednesday, I talked it over with Mom and Dad, and decided to take off for Mobile the next morning. Mom couldn't decide whether to go or not, and immediately regretted not going. So I packed up my car and took off. Perhaps of greater interest to my journal and its readers, though, is that I borrowed my dad's camera for the trip. The pictures are all available here, but I'll try to link to and insert them where appropriate.

(By the way, I do mean my car. After three years [and still a full year ahead of schedule], I completely paid off the loan. I officially own my first car!)

The 700-mile journey was amazing. Though I've made the trip many times, it was my first time going solo. I get strange looks from most people when I tell them how much fun twelve hours alone in a car can be, but I absolutely love it. It was especially impressive after having spent most of the past eight months on an island whose roads have no more than two lanes, and whose maxiumum speed limit is 30mph.

The first part of the trip was unremarkable. I took US-60E out of Springfield, and stayed on it until US-63S near the Arkansas border. I took 63 all the way to I-55S through Memphis. Determined to stop at either a Pizza Hut lunch buffet or barbecue (whichever I saw first), I found a Tops Bar-B-Q just before Memphis. I'd never heard of the place before, and it wasn't a big deal. It did, however, serve barbecue with all the trimmings--slaw, beans, bread, and sweet tea--so it fit the bill.

After Memphis, I drove across literally the entire state of Mississippi. The trip wasn't bad at all: the weather was simply gorgeous, and the time flew by with NPR blaring and my windows down. I-55 brought me down to Jackson, then I took US-49 down to Hattiesburg and I-59.

The trip was semi-secret: my aunt Gail was my co-conspirator. I wanted to surprise as many people as possible, but I also didn't want to show up to find out everyone had plans that couldn't be changed. Letting Gail in on things was the compromise: she casually asked around and made sure nobody was busy when I was planning on being around. I let word get out after I hit the road, though, so everyone knew I was coming by Thursday evening.

In Hattiesburg, I stopped at a Taco Bell for a snack, and to pore over my road atlas and daydream. The cashier struck up a conversation with me, and we talked about Japan while I waited for my food.

After wolfing down my decidedly disappointing chicken-cheese-and-rice-in-a-tortilla-but-with-this-month's-new-name burrito (there's just no beating Taco Bell's chicken quesadilla and Cheesy Gordita Crunch), and calculating the total number of miles I was going to cover this trip, I headed out the door. On my way out, I passed a middle-aged couple that was also leaving. The man struck me as a middle-aged version of Critter, my first landlord. He good-naturedly asked where I was headed, and he told me to be careful, since Fay was coming our way. It had already made landfall three times, and had just made its record fourth Florida landfall. I spell that out because that's what he did, making sure to hold up the corresponding number of fingers to avoid any confusion.

He went from Fay to talking about Katrina, and how his wife hadn't been able to work for a week, they had lost their house and had had to use $20,000 of their savings to recover from it. He went on to tell me that Katrina had pushed his homeowner's insurance payment up from $800 to $2,000 per month. After my answer to his first question--where I was headed--I really didn't say much else for about ten minutes, besides the customary "Hm"s, "Huh"s, and "Really?"s. Finally, he asked where I was coming from. When I told him I was from Missouri, I learned that he'd been to Missouri. He'd been to 39 states and 10 countries, in fact. I'm kind of glad I carefully neglected to mention I was visiting from Japan, because I was running late enough as it was, without spending another hour in a Mississippi Taco Bell parking lot listening to this nice man's travel stories.

I plowed out of Hattiesburg, and made the rest of the trip to Fairhope. I finally got to Gail's at 9:30.