I Miss Bill

We drove 428 miles in 11 hours today. Started in Memphis and ended in Mt. Pleasant, TX. That's not as far as I would've liked. I wanted to drive all the way to Dallas tonight, in order to put Marfa within driving distance for tomorrow. But it was getting late and my mom was tired of being in the car (which is understandable). I have a new plan now. Rather than spending tomorrow night in Marfa, we'll just drive to Midland, TX, which is about 200 miles closer. And that'll still put us within driving distance of Marfa for Sunday afternoon, which is fine because the second tour of Donald Judd's museum is at 2pm. The only potential cost to the new plan is that we might not get to see the Marfa Lights, as they require being in Marfa at night. Since the sun has been setting at around 5:30pm, though, we might be able to stick around long enough to check it out.

Today began with a visit to the Crystal Shrine Grotto in Memphis. It was really moving, and I've been to a lot of grottos. One enters the Crystal Shrine Grotto by walking into an opening at the base of a concrete tree trunk. Inside, there's a surprisingly large manmade cave, the ceiling and walls of which are covered with crystals.

Next we drove west and had lunch at Craig's BBQ in the impossibly small DeValls, AR. Their BBQ sauce was alright. My mom thought the cinnamon flavor in it was too strong.

We then drove to Little Rock and went to Clinton's Presidental Library. It was a depressing visit, partly because the exhibits at the library themselves were disappointingly impersonal and partly because it was a reminder of how good things used to be. We did see a Dale Chihuly Christmas tree, though, as well as some seriously sophisticated vacuuming (see the carpet in the recreated Oval Office, in the top photo).

After a visit to the Clinton museum store, where we got "I Miss Bill" tshirts, we drove to Hot Springs, AR. This was the highlight of today's sites, even though we only did a drive-by. Hot Springs looks pretty much unchanged from 50+ years ago and the downtown is full of a series of hot baths and resort hotels. It looks strangely European. I can't wait to go back, especially because we didn't visit any of the famous BBQ places in town.

Hot Springs is Clinton's boyhood home, and the next stop on our Clinton tour was Hope, AR. We checked out Clinton's birthplace there, although I'm unsure whether the white house we drove by was his "birthplace" or whether it was just where he lived once he left the hospital where he was born.

We had dinner in Hope and then drove the rest of the way to Mt. Pleasant, TX. We listened to the rest of Ambrose's Undaunted Courage on the way. It's too bad we're done with it, because it was a pretty good listen.