October 3 – “Into a foreign land”

So … Paris, Tennessee.  When we checked into the hotel, imagine my surprise when the desk clerk commented favorably on my Astros shirt.  He was from Clear Lake.  Then another customer came in.  It was a young girl wearing a Jose Altuve jersey.  I shook her hand.  Three Astros fans in a foreign land.  Gotta stick together.

We finally heard those dreaded banjo tunes.  Oddly enough it happened when … we took a shower.  Every time we turned it on the plumbing sounded exactly like a banjo strumming.  It was … frightening.

Oh, and one other thing happened in Paris that we haven’t seen since we left home.  It rained.  A lot.  For about twenty minutes.  The rain didn’t bode well for the folks we shared breakfast with.  Two college golf teams (University of Tennessee at Martin and Murray State) were in town for a tournament.  Good lunch, fellas.

We went back by the baby Eiffel tower that we took selfies at the night before.  We wanted another to go with the night views.  A kindly Parisian gentleman taking a stroll in the park took our picture for us.    We were especially excited that he spoke English so well.  Not a trace of a French accent.  He said he wouldn’t do this for just anybody.  We are so special.

And finally we hit the road.  We decided to pick up the one National Park in northern Arkansas that we missed last week, Buffalo River.  But to get there, it’s all back roads, all day.  Six and a half hours of drive time.  How “back roads”?  Well, Chris started keeping track of road kill. 

It took a while but I was excited when we made it to Missouri again.  Well, we made it into that little comma-looking bottom eastern corner.  We went through Hayti.  I think that’s how they spell it when it isn’t an island near Cuba.  We saw acres and acres of white – cotton fields. 

In Imboden we saw a sign – “You can fool the pastor but you can’t fool the Master.”  Yep.

In Ravenden we saw a giant, big as a house statue of … a raven.  Amazing.

We went through Bobo.  Just one street there – Bobo Avenue.

My two favorite town names of the day, though were Flippin and Yellville. 

When we got to Harrison, a ranger showed us where to go to actually see the river.  Then he suggested we eat in Jasper, and find a place to stay the night in Russellville.  We even saw that Dogpatch was on that route.  Finding the river was easy enough.  We even hiked down and I put my finger in.  Kind of a watery tradition of mine.  But we never saw Dogpatch.  In fact we never saw Jasper.  Fortunately, though, we connected with Randy and Janet Richardson, some friends we knew in Denver, who now live in a place called Pelsor, which was not on the map.  Instead the map called it Sand Gap.  But after we turned on the road toward their house we ended up in a place called Ben Hur.  Blacktop road to dirt road to rock driveway.  We heard those banjos again.

Leaving, we narrowly missed hitting three deer who chose that moment to leap across the road.  We also saw two others.  Not much speeding happens on that road.  Self defense.

We were happy to see an interstate, because that meant Russellville and a hotel for the night.  We checked in, went to McAllister’s Deli for a bite to eat, and settled in to watch the wild card game.  Looks like a return trip to Hot Springs tomorrow.

Psalms 103:20 says, “Praise the Lord, you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding, who obey his word.”

Father, thank you for the chance to see Randy and Janet.  Please encourage them and give them strength as they prepare to move.  Amen.