Marie and I drove to Kansas City the first night and enjoyed a walk around the Plaza in freezing cold temps. We ate at PF Changs because there isn't one in our town. And it was restaurant week in KC, so that pretty much eliminated the chance of eating anywhere creative without a reservation.
We talked all night long and took our sweet time getting up in the morning.
And then it was on to Arkansas. Uncharted territory.
We felt like Arkansas gets a bad rap. The roads were nice and the scenery was pretty. The towns were good, although there were a lot of churches along the sides of the highways. I guess that's maybe a thing?
The first stop of the day was the Crystal Bridges Museum, which was fabulous. We arrived and walked into this kind of military-complex-feeling place with an elevator that took you down into the valley where the museum was tucked. The building was amazing.
We found out that we came on the worst possible weekend. Two of the main exhibits were closed for a few months while they re-did the whole thing. The special exhibition was in transition so there wasn't one that weekend.
Nonetheless, it was amazing. Standing inches away from Norman Rockwell's Rosie, seeing the beautiful canvases of modern art. So many amazing things to see. We were there a few hours, exploring the architecture of the building and the different artists.
Then we ate at this expensive coffee shop there in the complex and took off toward Little Rock. We hadn't really made any plans to go there, but decided we might as well since we were pretty nearby, all things considered.
There was this theme between us about "bad luck" things that consistently happen to us. The first one mentioned was how my orders at coffee shops always get forgotten or screwed up. In this case, BOTH happened. Eventually I got the iced tea I'd ordered but wow. Marie's thing was that the gas station booths can never print her receipt. Turns out that was true also. A long-time running one that's been part of our friendship since kindergarten is that whenever I decide to celebrate my birthday with her, weather happens. Bad weather. I think it was third grade when she had to stay at least one extra night at my house for my birthday because the roads had iced over so much. For my sixteenth, some friends had planned a huge surprise party and the biggest blizzard we'd had in years (probably since third grade) came in and they had to cancel the whole thing. No one left the house for at least a day after that one.
So for this trip, even though we were headed south, I planned for some bad weather. We were fine most of the time. Until the last little leg between St. Louis and home. I've driven it before in a storm and the road maintenance on the avenue of the Saints is not always up to par. Especially for this little leg. It was a white-knuckled drive for the last hundred miles, taking a very slow route as the snow poured down and the untreated roads got slicker and slicker. True to form. Birthday times get snow for me and Marie.
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