The river's rising and it's time to leave

Larry watches TV while he works out every morning and the lead story has been the Memphis flood for days.  Now they're saying the river will crest earlier than they thought -- like tonight!

So we changed plans and drove to Little Rock to get across the Mississippi early in the day.  I-40 was flooded in two places so we joined all the truckers and other drivers on a two-lane, rural road for a couple of hours. We were only thinking about the Mississippi flooding - not all the tributaries and other big rivers as we passed miles of flooded fields and drove between areas where the water was within two feet of the road on both sides.

Side note:  we didn't realize that West Memphis is in Arkansas, across the Mississippi from Memphis, Tennessee.

Once we got out of the traffic we decided to stop for breakfast in a small Arkansas town to enjoy the atmosphere.  The first town we went through didn't have a cafe or much else - old, run-down and dying.  Pressing on, we came to Parkin, with just over 1,000 residents and one cafe. Not much else still operating. We were welcomed by an African American grandpa and ended up having a fantastic barbecue lunch since they were done serving breakfast. He runs the A&A City Cafe with his wife and grandson. This is just the atmosphere we were looking for. They took our picture to put up on the wall with all the other customers - bet we're the only people from Puyallup on that wall!

We got to Little Rock as the heat and humidity were rising.  Still 90 degrees at 6 p.m.  Spent time with the woman in the state visitor offices at the Capitol but instead of touring there, we went to the Clinton Presidential Library.  Talk about information overload; we really enjoyed it, having forgotten most of what we knew about that time period.

Drove through historic downtown Little Rock, which is on the Arkansas River.  There's been lots of redevelopment of old buildings, now filled with shops and restaurants on tree lined streets.  Very appealing place.  Our hotel was in North Little Rock close to medical facilities and the freeway.  We had dinner at a Chinese buffet - didn't realize that's what we were in until we sat down.  Food was very good and we both ate tons of vegetables!