Mt Pleasant, TX -> Nashville, TN
The Sulfur River was high, but there was room for a lot more water under that bridge. We saw a lot of high water and soggy ground through that corner of Texas, all across Arkansas, and western Tennessee. But those places were all soggy when we were westbound last month, and I was wondering then whether that was normal/seasonal for those places. anniemal drove for part of Arkansas, but the wind made her uneasy. It was windy most of the day on the highway, and it made the driving a lot more work. The stormy cold front that battered us out of Dallas continued east while we slept, and is probably chewing through the Appalachians now. It was grey and cloudy and colder for us all day, with occasional glimpses of almost sunshine. Into central Tennessee we caught drizzle and almost rain, catching up with the back side of the storms.
Not much to say about today's travel, just windy, windy, windy. I didn't see anything interesting to photograph while anniemal was driving, and not as much as usual while I was driving. The light wasn't so great anyway. One last Texas tile mural. When we stopped for gas in Hope, AR we finally went to Catfish King, a fast-food chain we've been seeing for the last few days. Cornmeal-battered catfish, french fries, hush puppies (very strange -- they looked smooth and extruded), red beans, and (very sweet) cole slaw.
Tonight we're at a Baymont (Inns & Suites) in Nashville. The room is nice, but no fridge or microwave. It's got that Nintendo thing. Iron and ironing board, coffee maker, hair dryer; name-brand soap and shampoo; $25 refundable deposit for the dog. Towards the high end of the room rates we've found. Expecting a better-than-average breakfast. 2 open AC sockets in the main room, and 3(!) by the sink (plus a 4th hidden on the fluorescent fixture). The desk has an unusual lamp with pass-thru sockets for AC and Ethernet. (It's heavy enough that the base might contain a surge surpressor.) Unfortunately, there is no available AC socket near this lamp, so the pass-thru has no juice and the lamp has no light.
The WiFi here didn't configure itself, much like the problems we had in Texarkana. DHCP gave us IP addresses and a router, but I couldn't ping or telnet to the router's address (no route to host). But this time the front desk provided a help number, and from there we got manual configuration details. (Their phone menu went into a very detailed description of how to get the IP address from Windows. I punted for a human at that point.) Even after all this, it still required creating "accounts" with the ISP. Cumbersome. fetchmail is also quitting with errors every time I try to retrieve my email. I think it is timing out because the connection is too slow.
We may be at my Mom's house in NC tomorrow night, in which case we won't have Internet access, and Nashville may be our last postings before we return home.
Not much to say about today's travel, just windy, windy, windy. I didn't see anything interesting to photograph while anniemal was driving, and not as much as usual while I was driving. The light wasn't so great anyway. One last Texas tile mural. When we stopped for gas in Hope, AR we finally went to Catfish King, a fast-food chain we've been seeing for the last few days. Cornmeal-battered catfish, french fries, hush puppies (very strange -- they looked smooth and extruded), red beans, and (very sweet) cole slaw.
Tonight we're at a Baymont (Inns & Suites) in Nashville. The room is nice, but no fridge or microwave. It's got that Nintendo thing. Iron and ironing board, coffee maker, hair dryer; name-brand soap and shampoo; $25 refundable deposit for the dog. Towards the high end of the room rates we've found. Expecting a better-than-average breakfast. 2 open AC sockets in the main room, and 3(!) by the sink (plus a 4th hidden on the fluorescent fixture). The desk has an unusual lamp with pass-thru sockets for AC and Ethernet. (It's heavy enough that the base might contain a surge surpressor.) Unfortunately, there is no available AC socket near this lamp, so the pass-thru has no juice and the lamp has no light.
The WiFi here didn't configure itself, much like the problems we had in Texarkana. DHCP gave us IP addresses and a router, but I couldn't ping or telnet to the router's address (no route to host). But this time the front desk provided a help number, and from there we got manual configuration details. (Their phone menu went into a very detailed description of how to get the IP address from Windows. I punted for a human at that point.) Even after all this, it still required creating "accounts" with the ISP. Cumbersome. fetchmail is also quitting with errors every time I try to retrieve my email. I think it is timing out because the connection is too slow.
We may be at my Mom's house in NC tomorrow night, in which case we won't have Internet access, and Nashville may be our last postings before we return home.