We woke up this Sunday morning with a spring in our step, ready to push eastward towards where the Storm Prediction Center said that there would be a chance for severe weather on Monday. We knew that today would be a dedicated repositioning day, so we quickly left our hotel and got on the road heading west.
Our first stop of the day was in Jackson, TN, famous for being the city where the legendary train engineer Casey Jones lived at the time of his death. The legend has it that Jones volunteered to fill in for another engineer who was sick and couldn’t make his trip. Jones was known for being punctual, so when he saw that the train would be late, he knew he had to speed up to make up the time. Unfortunately, as he got closer to the station, there was a train broken down on the tracks that he was not warned about. Jones used his expertise in conducting to slow the train and prevent the death or injury of anyone on the train - except for himself. They say that he was still clutching the train’s whistle and its brake when he died. (Title of this blog post is a reference to the Grateful Dead song about Casey Jones).
Jackson was also our stop for breakfast, where we patronized a local Waffle House. It was the first time at this establishment for many of the crew, and we all left feeling satisfied. As Sam said, “There’s nowhere that you can get this good of food for five dollars.”
After fueling up on bacon, eggs, and of course, waffles, we headed westbound and down to Little Rock, AR. Little Rock was a cool town with a great little food joint called The Root, which offered healthy options for lunch from local farms. Jack Volinsky had a chicken salad sandwich which he claims he could have had 37 more of, but the jury’s still out. Just east of Little Rock was a great trail called Pinnacle Mountain, which provided vistas of the Arkansas backcountry.
If you look real close, you’ll see that Jack’s eyes are closed. The gnats were abundant on the peak.
The views were absolutely stunning, and worth the pretty vertical rock scrambling that we had to do to get to the peak.
The climb took it out of us, so after a quick stop for water and snacks, we pressed onward towards Dallas/Fort Worth, TX. On the way there we stopped at a cute family owned restaurant called the Red Barn where we got some down-home Texas cooking. Chocolate pie was the appetizer for a few of the team, which Ryan devoured at breakneck speed. We had another two and a half hours to our hotel, so we settled in for a long drive though some wide open spaces to get to our destination in hopes for Monday’s events.
Today didn’t bring much by way of weather, which goes to show the importance of being flexible and keeping morale high throughout the entire trip. Today wasn’t a waste of a day by any means - we simply looked ahead to greater opportunities further west. We are motivated and ready for our last few days out on the plains and hoping to see some severe weather and continue to share our journey with you all!
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