Current location: Houston, TX N 29 32.886', W 095 05.773', elev 5 ft.

Well, I haven't written in a while. I wasn't pleased with my last few entries from an integrity standpoint; I felt my writing had been this long narrative and was lacking readability and had become a chore for me. Additionally, the entries I put up are really a very rough first draft from my point of view, and I just don't have as much time as I want to spend editing and making the entries better. So I took a few days off from writing to regroup.

What have I been doing? My path the last few days has been as follows: On Sunday, I drove South on I-55 through Missouri, into Arkansas, until I came to West Memphis AR where I stopped for the night. On Monday, I drove around Memphis, went to Graceland, and then drove West on I-40 into Little Rock, AR. On Tuesday, I spent the day in Arkansas, visiting Hot Springs via I-30 and back to Little Rock to the William J Clinton Library and Museum. Tuesday night I headed south from Little Rock on US 65, until I came to Tallulah, LA, where I headed east on I-20 into Jackson, MS (N 32 18.267', W 090 10.242'). Wednesday, I headed south from Jackson on I-55 to New Orleans, LA (N 29 56.968', W 090 03.826'), one of my favorite cities. From New Orleans, I headed west on I-10 to Baton Rouge. Then On thursday, I continued on I-10 until I got to Houston.

What have I been noticing? In Southern Missouri, I got my first real taste of the great plains. I could see long stretches of land in all directions, often a few miles until it was broken by trees. Driving by all those crops, sometimes they would be oriented towards the road in such a way that the planting rows give the plants a wave effect as you drive by, because you can only see down the planting row perpendicular to the car. You see the crest of the wave as it follows the car. I witnessed a dust devil or two, a spectacular sight, as the air is dancing all of it's own, silhouetted by the dirt particles in the air.

Driving at night on the plains, you can see the lights of approaching cars, but really have no idea how far they are. At a certain distance, the lights don't change size, don't get larger on the approach. It may take a minute for an approaching car to reach you, or five, which means the lights could be upwards of ten miles away when you first notice them.

I'm getting pretty sick of driving on concrete roads. I would say the roads south of New Jersey are 99% concrete, which makes for some pretty loud driving. The concrete is hard and unyielding, has no soft give, just loud bumps. And it is probably damaging my car more than pavement would. Arkansas, though, does have some nice banked roads.

Graceland. I don't know, I've never really gotten the whole Elvis thing. I understand there is a rabid following, I understand he's sold upwards of a billion records, more than any other artist, but I just don't get it. He wasn't really an artist or musician, he didn't write songs at all, but triumphed due to a great voice and good looks; a man perfect for Vegas. In my opinion, good, not great. Despite this, I went to Graceland anyway; so many people told me I needed to go. And it was almost worth it. I paid $5 for parking and $27 for admission. I think I would have been a lot happier paying $10 plus parking, and I actually let them know this on this on the guest register.

The tour was pretty interesting, it is a restoration from the 1970's, and still has the original green shag carpeting from that era (including on the ceiling and the walls). The tour was given as a self guided audio tour. My favorite room of the main house was the TV room.



3 TVs, one for each of the networks



The trophy room was also very impressive, as it houses all the gold and platinum records on the walls.

the tour went out of its way to show Elvis was a generous philanthropist, which I didn't find weird, until I came to a wall that was just a collection of cancelled checks written out to charities.



At the end of the main tour, you come to the memorial garden, where there is a gravesite with Elvis' parents, his grandmother, his twin brother who died at birth, and Elvis's grave.



The area was serene as it should have been, but I was astonished that a good portion of the visitors were crying at the gravesite.

I also went to the automobile museum and saw Elvis' car collection. You can see the day's photos here, including the cars, though there were no flashes allowed so a lot of the photos didn't come out too well. Overall, the tour was enjoyable, it just should cost less, in my opinion. Unless you are going to be in Memphis for some other reason, I don't recommend planning a vacation around Graceland. You might be just as well off with the virtual tour found on the Graceland website.

At the Graceland tour, the people touring near me were driving me nuts, prompting me to come up with a few rules for museums, tours, and sites.
1. Get the fuck out of my way.
2. Don't bring kids to attractions not aimed at kids.
3. If you absolutely have to bring your kids to a site like graceland, don't let them wander around walking into people. I feel like a magnet for kids who aren't looking where they are going. I try to avoid them and yet they still smack into me.
4. If I am taking a photo, don't walk in front of me, douchebag.
5. Don't take forever looking at something, move along. It's not a renaissance painting for christ's sake, its a sequined jumpsuit.
6. Stop talking so loud; I can't hear my audio tour. Why do you feel the need to talk at all? Just observe and listen.
7. Damnit, I said get your damn kids out of my way!

Now that I got that off my chest, I'm all better now.

When I visited Hot Springs National Park, it was a real rainy day, and I'd like to hold that against the park. The park was definitely not a fun one, even discounting the weather, and I didn't even bother to take any photos. It might have been nice to tour some of the bathouses and learn about medicine from the late 19th century, but I guess my heart just wasn't in it due to the weather. Of the national parks I've visited thus far, this ranks the lowest, but that doesn't mean its awful; its still a national park after all.

I got to the William J Clinton Library at about 4 PM, which was just enough time to walk through before it closed at 5. I haven't been to any other presidential libraries, so I have no reference point. I was surprised to find that the library wasn't as biased as I figured it would be, because there were mentions of Whitewater (though no stained blue dress or infamous cigar on the wall). Clinton was a great president at a great time in our country, and this library is a fitting tribute to him. Photos.

South of the state of Mississippi, Louisiana is a lot of swamp. The highway here is elevated so its a lot of long bridges between dry land. Its actually very interesting to drive on. I guess I just missed the tropical storm (Cathy I think?) because the skies were clear and the weather was beautiful in New Orleans. I drove through New Orleans wednesday, but that's pretty much all I did was drive through. New Orleans is a night city; one that I love, by the way, its definitely my favorite of all the ones I've been to (I've been there once before, in april 2002). But I couldn't find any places in the french quarter that were cheap enough for me to stay a night, and I didn't want to have to stay way away from the quarter and then pay for a taxi or drive. So I pretty much just drove around, watching people and enjoyed the weather. Couldn't find cheap parking so I couldn't walk around. I'll be back sometime, no doubt.

Driving west from Baton Rouge, I felt like a tank during wartime, being bombarded by thousands of enemy planes. Only the planes were huge dragonflies, 5 inches long with a wing span of 6 inches, they look prehistoric, diving and flying into the windshield. At 70 MPH, if you hit a dragonfly, he will leave 70 MPH of juice debris on your windshield, glance off and still be big enough that you can see him hit the ground in your rearview, or glancing off the car in front of you arcing onto the road before you. And yes, they still get caught in the windshield wipers. In fact, all the insects in Louisiana were unnaturally large. At the side of the road, I drove by a few large lanky things, before realizing they were grasshoppers. To be able to see them clearly at 70 MPH, they had to have been 4 or 5 inches long. Butterflies as well, were large enough to spot down the road flitting in the roadway, but I think they are too light to get smashed by the cars.

Texas is huge of course. I-10 in Texas begins with mile marker 884. Everything's larger in Texas, and that is no exception for huge balloon characters and huge flags at car dealerships. I saw an exceptionally weird billboard, that had a couple in wedding attire. The billboard read "end excessive sweat" and was an advertisement for some sort of surgical procedure.

Houston is the definition of urban sprawl. The city stretches about 40 miles in each direction from the center. The buildings on the outskirts are ugly, built for utility and economy, not aesthetics. They remind me of photos of buildings from Soviet era Russia. Houston proper, however, has very fine architecture; the buildings are spectacular and make a great skyline, and the surrounding land is well kept. The downtown is very clean and hospitable.

Last night I attended the Astros Padres game at Minute Maid Park. I enjoyed the park, it is an open air stadium with a retractable roof. Unfortunately, the roof was closed due to thunderstorms. I paid $5 to park at a garage and another $5 for nosebleed tickets. Once again, I never made it to my seat, and stayed at the lower level the whole game. When the Astros hit a home run, a lifesize train car above the outfield wall starts a chuggling along.



The Astros made a good game of it after giving up a 7 to 1 deficit, getting baserunners on every inning, to get the score up to 7-5. In the end however, it wasn't enough and the Padres held on for the victory. Photos here.

Today I'm headed to Johnson Space Center, then driving towards Dallas on I-45.

Current location: West Memphis, AR, N 35 10.110', W 090 11.337' elev 191 ft.

On Saturday, I had a great day in St. Louis. In the morning, I packed up my tent and started driving towards St. Louis on I-70. On the radio, XM had coverage of Live 8. I was pretty pleased to hear XM had 7 stations dedicated to coverage, one for each of the six main stages, and 1 dedicated to playing the highlights. My favorite performances (of the ones I heard) were Green Day, and Black Eyed Peas. While XM had extensive coverage, its unfortunate that if you didn't have XM or an AOL account, your exposure to the concert was very limited. MTV had some coverage, but from what I heard, it was mostly inane banter by VJs who had no idea what they were doing or who most of the musical acts were, or the significance or history of what was occurring. From what I understand, MTV even cut to commercial during the performance by Pink Floyd, the first united performance of the core members of the band since 1981. Being able to listen to Live 8 on the drive in, I knew I was in for a good day; plus the weather was perfect, low 80's not too humid, not a cloud in the sky.

On the drive to St. Louis, you can start to see the Gateway Arch from about 20 miles away, and it is quite a sight. It just rises up and above the Mississippi river and dominates the sky. I noticed that the Arch sort of has an illusion; since it is practically two dimensional compared to its height, it is sometimes tough to distinguish the orientation of the arch from far away. You can't tell if you are viewing it at one angle, or the angle perpendicular to that. I drove around the city a bit to get my bearings. I found the ballpark, the Arch and the Anheuser-Busch Brewery tour.

My first activity for the day was the brewery tour, which is about 2 miles from downtown. Especially when compared to the Coca-Cola tour, the Budweiser tour is exceptionally great! First of all, it is free, and the tours leave every ten minutes, so there is no waiting. On the tour, the first stop is the barn where they mate and keep the clydesdale horses. Then the real parts of the tour begin. They bring you to the Beechwood aging room, which smells like delicious beer. Just in this warehouse room, there were 16 tanks, stacked 4 by 4, each holding 200,000 barrels worth of beer (a barrel is 31 gallons). Very huge, very impressive. I was always under the impression that beechwood aging meant the barrels were made of beachwood, but they actually spread beechwood chips on the floor of the tanks, and this adds to the carbonation of the beer. The aging lasts at least 4 days in the large tanks. Next stop, they showed a short video about the history of the company, before showing us the ingredients used in making beer, and then the actual brewing room, controlling the manufacture process. Finally, they brought us to another building and showed a film on the canning and bottling operation, and then showed the actual canning operation. It was completely amazing, up to date, and blows Coke right out of the water. The final part of the tour, the highlight, they bring you to a room where you can sample the beer for free, up to two full glasses of beer. I tried Budweiser Select and Michelob Ultra.



They didn't allow photos at most of the locations on the tour, but I did get some shots

Next up, I found a parking garage downtown near the ballpark and the Gateway Arch, and made my way to the Arch. There was a huge fair going on downtown on the waterfront under the arch, called Fair St. Louis, which made it a little difficult to drive around.



I had always heard you could go up into the arch, and this was my plan, so I made way over there and discovered there is a huge museum run by the National Park Service below the ground at the arch. The whole monument is called the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. I think because of the fair, there was a long wait in the heat just to get into the area below the arch. Once in, I walked up to the ticket desk and got a ticket to the arch which included a viewing of a National Geographic film on the Lewis and Clark expedition. The ticket cost $14, but with my National Park Pass, I got $3 off. The film was first, but I had about 15 minutes before it started, so I walked around, visited the gift shop, and picked up some postcards and the map and guide of the monument (which cost $.25 here, though it is free at every other park and monument I have visited).

I went to the film which lasted 45 minutes, and then went up in the tram to the top of the Arch, which while it had very small viewing windows, afforded quite a nice view of the city.




I came down from the arch with a bit of time to spare before the baseball game, so I took some photos of the Mississippi, and then went to Busch Stadium to catch the baseball game. There were thousands of people milling in the streets waiting to get into the game. I got to the ticket window, and tried to get the cheapest seat, but the seats were completely sold out. They were selling standing room only tickets for $12, which I thought was bit high. I got into the stadium, and it is a nice nice stadium. It opened in 1966, but it is much better than the other stadiums I've seen from that era, so I can't understand why they are building a new Busch Stadium next door to open in 2006. The fans in St. Louis are spectacular, and very knowledgeable. The announced attendance for the game was forty eight thousand, and practically every seat was filled. I was lucky enough to find a real nice seat to sit in for the game, about 40 rows from the field, on the third base line. By the fourth inning, a couple who also had SRO tickets came and sat next to me, and we chatted for most of the game. They told me all about the team, how their fans travel to other cities to watch the games like Red Sox fans do, and they expressed pleasure and congratulations for the Sox' world series win. They also talked about the new stadium, and said that the team completely pulled the wool over the tax-payers eyes. They don't need a new stadium in St. Louis, and so the stadium was approved for public funding before the public even had heard about it. The stadium is completely funded by tax-payers, and yet the team will own the stadium.

The game was very exciting, and 99% of the fans stayed until the end. Unfortunately, the Cardinals lost to the Rockies, 3-1, but the Cardinals had several chances to score, and the fans were really paying attention. Once again, they didn't need to be told when to cheer and give the team support, in contrast to Yankees fans. A neat sight on the way out of the park was seeing a column that had some graffiti that read Red Sox fans were here, 10/27/2005.



I had been told that there was going to be fireworks for the Fair and for Independence Day. I regretted having parked in the garage, but I made my way down to the Arch area to watch the fireworks. Incredibly, I found a great spot, with a direct view of the arch, and I knew I was in for a treat, because the fireworks would be exploding in the middle of the arch. People started to fill in around me, and the fireworks started at about 9:40. The fireworks lasted 20 minutes, and were an excellent cap to the day. I got a few photos, one of which I am going to submit to a photo contest by the National Park Service.





So, I had an excellent day in St. Louis. See the rest of the photos here. After the fireworks, the streets were filled with 400,000 people, so I jut walked back to the garage, and waited about an hour and a half until the garage emptied. At this time, I was very tired, so I just drove until I found a cheap motel and crashed.