Lebanon to Little Rock

As we packed the car to leave Lebanon this morning, I felt a few drops of liquid from the sky.  Earlier in the morning, I had gotten a picture of the sunrise against the grey sky but as the morning progress towards time to leave, things got a little darker.  I decided that I wanted a cup of Starbucks, so we drove to the local outlet as the skies were turning darker.  I got my coffee and we turned to get on Highway 44 South towards Springfield.  According to Google, there is no fast way to go from Lebanon to Little Rock.  Without stops, it was at roughly four and a half hours.

While the speed limit on I44 is 70 mph, only an idiot would drive at that speed with the amount of water that decided to drop on us just a few miles south of Lebanon.  I've seen rain like this before in Arizona but I have never seen lightening bolts the size of the ones coming from the sky.  I was beginning to think that someone upstairs wasn't happy with our Easter celebration.  We turned onto Highway 65 to head in a more southern direction.  It continued to rain in buckets and we found ourselves on a two lane highway with a bunch of people who didn't want to follow us at the posted speed limit.

In Harrison, Arkansas I was tired of driving and we were both hungry.  We stopped at a local, non franchise dinner to see what they had to offer.  While we could have chosen the buffet for $8.99, we both ordered from the menu.  I had a breakfast burrito with hash browns and Mia had a veg omelet with hash browns and rye toast.  OMG, the food was to die for.  Small diner, was packed with locals and we could see why.

We left the cafe to more rain.  Thunder, lightening and rain blew over us as we made our way down the highway until we got about 30 miles north of Little Rock and things, while overcast, dried up.  We haven't seen any rain since arriving in Little Rock.

A little travel side note.  Don't forget to enter the address in Google maps that is your final destination.  If you enter the city and state all bets are off.  That is what I did and we ended up at the state capitol grounds just outside of downtown Little Rock.  Needless to say, we were several miles from our final destination.  In fact, we had passed our final destination on the way into town.

We are on to New Orleans tomorrow morning and it promises to be a fun, if not long day of driving.  Hoping the weather is much better so we can trade off driving duties.  Mia wasn't too willing to drive in the torrential down pour today so I took the whole trip behind the wheel.

As promise we did a couple of other things while in Lebanon.  On the way to my cousins house we decided to visit some of the small neighborhood villages.  One place we stopped was another Quilt shop.  They weren't open and it appeared it was in some one's garage.

We moved on down the road visiting Falcon, Lynchburg, and Competition.  Then we went to Nebo and found this:

Earlier in the day I visited the Route 66 Museum in the Lebanon Library.  Small but packed with history.  Apparently Missouri didn't even want Route 66, they want Route 60.  They got Route 66, a short section still exists within the city limits.  Walk down an earlier time with me....

There you have it.  I am looking forward to our next adventures.  Hope all is well and thanks for dropping by.