Arkansas Road Trip

This will be a brief travelogue...I just need a place to keep my notes.

Thursday afternoon (August 30)
Left Dallas about 2:30 pm. Drove on I-30 east. Stopped in Sulfur Springs and ate at Tradicion Mexicana, a place painted green, red, and white in obvious reverence of the Mexican flag; we wanted a snack. It was open, but not expecting customers. I ordered 1 taco de lengua and 1 taco al pastor; Janine had 1 taco de lengua. They also gave us chips and hot sauce…very good. It rained like crazy while we were eating. When I went to men’s room, the floor was awash in water from outside.

The guy at the cash register was very nice. He took our order, then went to the kitchen and told them, in Spanish, what to make for us. The cook did it and then delivered the food to us, then quickly came back with salsas, chopped cilantro and onion, and limes. The cook was a young guy with lots and lots of tattoos all over his arms. He spoke a little English, I think, but not much.

We stopped in Texarkana and stayed at the La Quinta, same place we stayed before. My wife decided we should eat at Dixie Diner #2, one of 3 local chain restaurants. She had chicken livers; I had chicken fried steak. The utensils were dirty, so we go replacements. The food was so-so, in my opinion.

Friday, August 31, 2007
I had a couple of hard-boiled eggs and a sausage roll from the continental breakfast offering at the hotel. Off we went, heading toward Little Rock and the Clinton Presidential Library. On the way, we stopped in Benton, Arkansas to view some interesting Victorian architecture. While there, we came across the Gann Building, claimed to be the only building built of bauxite in existence today. Dr. Dewell Gann, Sr. had patients who could not pay him, so they built an office for him...they cut the soft bauxite from a nearby farm and allowed it to harden for six weeks before building the structure for him.

When we got to Little Rock, just about lunchtime, we ate at Loca Luna, a place my wife had read about about on Food Network...Rachel Ray had or will have a focus on the place on one of her shows. It was an exceptionally good place. We had chile con queso, a different version than I’m used to…white melted cheese with green peppers (hottish, but not blazing) and various spices…very good. Then, I had a salad with a tomato dressing (fabulous) and a margherita pizza with goat cheese on top (the cheese was my requested addition). My wife had a wonderful cream of roasted red pepper soup. The menu looked fabulous…definitely a place to go back to.

Then, we went to the library. It's a tremendous place and a stark reminder of how far we’ve fallen since he left office. Despite his failings, on his worst day he was a 100 times better than Bush on Bush’s best day. I have a few pictures…including this picture of the Bridge to the 21st Century, an old bridge that crosses the Arkansas River and deadends at the Presidential Library.

While we were on the way to Little Rock, we listened to an interesting radio program by Bruce Cochran, who talked about wine. It was worth listening to and worth finding again. So, here's a link to his website, which has a link to enable live streaming of his program or later download.

Afterward, we wandered around near the library, went to the library gift store, and I bought a t-shirt. I’ll try to get a picture of my shirt, one day, and post it here. Incidentally, my photos of the library are pretty lousy. You can see better photos by clicking here.


Then, we headed east, not knowing just how far we’d go…maybe it would be to North Little Rock, maybe further. During the drive, we witnessed what I'll call a "numeric automotive palindrome." As you can see from the photo, I took this picture of my odometer while I was driving at just under seventy miles per hour. Do not do this. I find it reprehensible for other people to drive as recklessly as I have been known to do.

We went further. We got to Memphis and decided to stay at a Hampton Inn in West Memphis, AR. We had dinner at Neely’s Interstate BBQ, which has recently been featured on Alton Brown’s Feasting on Asphalt. We got the sampler, which included beef and pork ribs, pulled pork, beef brisket, slaw, potato salad (an add-on), baked beans, tea…it was good, but a bit disappointing compared to my expectations. My wife got a to-go piece of sweet-potato pie, which turned out to be a miniature pie in its own tiny tin.


Saturday, September 1
My favorite wife decided we should avoid spending a day in Memphis on Saturday, so she pulled out her maps and got us on the Great River Road. We wandered down the Great River Road through vast fields of cotton, corn, and long-forgotten buildings that reflect how powerful neglect and the lack of money can be. Here are a few shots:

The first one is a shot of a tractor in a field against a backdrop of a huge automated irrigation system. The irrigation systems we saw were impressive, though probably horrifically wasteful. The monster John Deere tractors we saw paled in comparison to other pieces of equipment (unfortunately, I didn't get pictures of the really big stuff...I was too awestruck by its size to think of pictures).

The second and third photos are examples of the dozens of huge old buildings...barns, homes, silos, etc...that have decayed almost into oblivion. If I were an artist or a professional photographer, I would call some of these pieces "Legacy of the George Bush Presidencies," if for no other reason than to underscore the fact that a family has broken a country, not the other way around. Note in the second photo the new structures behind the dilapidated building. Preservation...nahh.


The old red monster looks like it could have been an impressive building it ins day. I wish I had some idea of when these buildings were built and what they were once used for. Sometime, I wonder how quickly we plan obsolescence, or why we fail to take it into account when we build something big and expensive.

My wife had found yet another Alton Brown Feasting on Asphalt joint and we headed that way. This one was Ray's Dairy Maid, a tiny little diner with a take-out window where we saw quite a few people drop in to get food to go. It also has just a few tables inside, which is where we opted to have our lunch. The place looks like it needs a serious cleaning, but the people are exceptionally nice and the food was much better than I had expected (Alton and friends had pie there, not lunch). I ordered the special of the day, which was a ham and turkey melt on grilled sourdough bread, with a side of fries. I expected shaved turkey and ham...instead, they cut large, thick slices of ham and very thick slices of turkey, then grilled them and put them on top of the grilled bread, with a white cheese (I also got jalapeños on mine). It was astonishingly good! My wife had a small hamburger with tater tots. Hers was OK, but mine...I'm a believer in that food now. My wife also got a piece of one of their pies, which they make onsite...she got the pecan coconut...very tasty.

As we wandered down the Great River Road, we discovered that, at one point, it became a very narrow and completely unpaved and untraveled road through a thick woods. That stretch lasted about fourteen miles. Here is a shot of the road...very peaceful place. However, after quite a few miles on a very rough, very remote road with no traffic in either direction, I began to wonder if we had made a wrong turn somewhere along the way. No, there was no wrong turn, just a long, long empty stretch of a rough road through a dense forest.

We stayed overnight that night at a Comfort Suites in El Dorado, Arkansas. We had dinner that night at a pretty lousy Mexican restaurant called Old Mexico. Don't waste your money. The service was abysmal, the food was tasteless, and it was generally a place to avoid. The next morning, we had breakfast at Johnny B's Grill at 211 S. West Avenue. I'd recommend it...both of us had a fairly big but fairly common and hard to make wonderful breakfast (eggs, bacon [me], sausage [she], biscuits, etc.). But my "scattered" hashbrowns had peppers, jalapeños, onions, etc., etc. on them and they were especially good.

From El Dorado, we headed toward Texarkana, using backroads and lightly-traveled highways. It was a pleasant drive. We were not hungry by the time we reached Texarkana, so we kept going. We got as far as New Boston and decided we should eat because we planned to wander back roads from there on and might not find anything open or worth eating at. So we ate at a place not worth eating at in New Boston, the Pitt Grill, a place abuzz with swarms of flies. Most of the waitstaff looked like they were non-recovering meth addicts and acted the same. I had a Texas Philly cheesesteak, which wasn't too bad but I did wonder about the flies and whether they had spent time in the kitchen with the beef. I figured that the 3 whole jalapeños I ate with the meal probably killed the larvae. My wife had a BLT that looked rather flimsy and unsubstantial. Stay away from New Boston...it looks and acts like a hillbilly redneck drug den.

From there, we headed north toward Paris, Texas. We did notice, while we were passing through DeKalb, Texas, that there is a decent-looking eatery (we didn't get the name...but we thought it was FSJ steakhouse, but could only find Front Street Junction on the internet as a possibility) on Highway 82...it was open about 2pm on Sunday, September 2. De Kalb, incidentally, is the birthplace of Dan Blocker, the actor who played Hoss Cartwright on the old television show, Bonanza. We wandered back roads and finally made our way to Paris, where we noticed (for a future trip) Old Town Seafood on the square. We went to the chamber of commerce building and found, of course, that it was closed. We had hoped to find a replica of the Eifel Tower, which I vaguely remember reading about not long ago...to not avail. Maybe next trip.

We didn't have any particular timeframe or destination in mind, so we just drove, stopping occasionally to stretch or get water or what have you. We did go through Bonham, at which point my wife remembered that, years ago, we had stopped at a hamburger joint near the Sam Rayburn Library and had eaten wonderfully flavorful Ortega chile burgers. Alas, the place is gone.

Heading west, we found ourselves in Denison, where we had an early dinner at the Jalapeño Tree Restaurant. The hostesses were useless...two moronic teenage girls who didn't understand that their idiotic conversations between one another should stop when guests walk in the front door and stand before them for a good 30 seconds. The food was dull and unimaginative. The place was decorated to the gills in all sorts of things that cried "artificial Mexicana." It looked to me like a very, very nasty chain restaurant. We soon discovered that it is, although it's only a regional chain. With the food and service, it will never make it nationally. Please. It should not be a national chain. It shouldn't even be a local chain.

We were tired of driving by the time we finished eating, but we had another 70 miles to go, so we hopped on the Interstate and headed south. Just as we got to the gas station where we stopped to buy a Sunday paper, it started raining. We decided it was time to sleep in our own bed for a change.