Little Rock, Arkansas: 330 miles, 2.5 miles, Arkansas State Capitol, 2 new states, 6 caches, one "wild" cacher.

I was up at 6:30. We had a good breakfast buffet and got started at 8:50. We put the travel bug magnet back on. I drove the first leg to a travel bug inn that actually had good stuff in it, on the Texas-Louisiana border. (75 miles, 10:30.) This was a great cache, with 6 TBs in it. I meant to take two but in the event only took one, and left 2. One is a friend's, which I've been nursing along for awhile to find a good place for it.

At our next cache we turned out to be in Louisiana. Fortunately, Rich had kept the route list for yesterday's trip, since this cache turned out to be in it. Our first and only Louisiana cache. And as we were logging it down, someone else came to it, as well. We met our first cacher on the road, though I suspect we'll meet more as we get closer to Nashville. He's a native, so he'll be a familiar face. He also qualifies as a collaborator on our 100-friend challenge!

We were in Shreveport for 3 months in 1968 and haven't been in Louisiana since. I didn't feel the need to look up the olde homestead, so we just headed north to Arkansas. We got there at 11:52.

Lordie. All the caches are in thickets in swamps. We skipped them here, we skipped them there. We stopped in Fouke to take a picture of the Fouke monster, and carried on.

We were listening to Rush talking about the Notre Dame speech. 0bama said he was "persuaded" by the "gentle" Cardinal Bernadin (who is dead so he can't comment). I think this is a way of dissing the current cardinal (or at least the archbishop) who didn't approve of his honorary degree. 0bama is using sweet reason in the service of evil. (I think killing babies is evil, and that makes me an extremist.)

Each cattle egret seems to have its own cow.

At 12:45 we were on I-30 and found a rest area. We got a nice Arkansas tour book. It lists any silly thing, but doesn't have the Merci Boxcar in Helena. On the radio I heard Nacodoches pronounced..."NAK-o-dish."

We stopped in Hope for lunch and saw Clinton's birthplace. Nice house... I'd pictured a shack, actually.

Finally, at 2 or so, we got an Arkansas cache. It involved mud, ants, and poison ivy, it was wet, but at least it was there. In Arkadelphia we gave up on one, then spent a good 20 minutes in the woods trying to locate another. Argh.

There was one nice cache in a tree at a park-and-ride lot. Then we went into Little Rock proper. We found the Capitol and went on in. I'm spoiled by how spacious California's is: this one seemed cramped. Nice, though. And the people are very friendly. Out on the grounds, we saw some nice memorials, including a beautiful rendition in metal of the Little Rock Nine. I remember news clips of these poor kids walking through the howling mobs, screaming at them and the wall of hate. I especially remember one woman, face contorted, spitting at them. I've often wondered how the mob people felt about themselves 20-30 years later. How do the ones who are still alive feel now?

This is when the frustration really began. I hadn't loaded up the Little Rock Caches into the PDA, so had to pull out the laptop to look up the ones close to the Capitol. It's rush hour, downtown, and streets are blocked and everything. Even with information, though, we couldn't find the caches. Finally we gave up and went to the motel, where I tried to find something nearby.

1.6 miles away we found a park and the cache in it. We're so spoiled in California! But we got one at last. We ate, then got back here. Rich wanted to do stuff on the computer and I was too tired to cope, so I went to bed at 9 and left him to it. I'm getting frustrated. Even on the short days, I can't get my computer work done, nor can I swim.