A trip to Memphis

Perhaps my readers will remember my saying I needed a road trip, and deciding Omaha would be a great destination.  If you watch the news, you know all about the flooding and freezing cold, and the snowstorms and rain storms that have occurred in Nebraska ever since I decided to go there.  I realized I needed a different destination, and decided Memphis would be perfect.  When I checked out a few websites, I knew we'd have no problem finding interesting things to see and do there.  Cliff is never actually happy to hear I want to travel, especially to destinations that requires driving almost 500 miles; we won't talk about the August tractor show we'll be attending that's a wee bit further than that.

Here's the deal:  Cliff has never enjoyed driving long distances.  It doesn't help that we've always lived at least 30 miles from anyplace he has been employed, except for long ago when he worked at the butcher shop that was less than five miles from our house; after about fifty-six years of spending forty-five minutes to an hour one way on the road going to work, it didn't take him long to learn to hate it.  It's worse now that he's older, with aches and pains everywhere.  Hours on the road magnifies the pain.  But he loves me, and usually tries to enjoy it as much as he can.  For my part, I try not to push him into very many long trips.  It's all about compromise.

There is flooding in all parts of the country, it seems.  It's time for the spring thaw up north, so it's only going to get worse.  Memphis sits right on the Mississippi River, so we were a little worried about going there, but there wasn't anything on the national news, and weather.com didn't say a lot about Memphis, so away we went, deciding to leave Sunday.  

We took Gabe-the-Mini-Schnauzer to granddaughter Amber's house Saturday, where he always has a happy time playing with her Shih Tzu and the cats.  He likes visiting there, but he is always happy to see me when we return.  We got home after 10 PM last night, and went to get him this morning (Wednesday).  He came home to a surprise:  a new dog bed from Costco online that he seems to absolutely love.  I bought it for him because I'm always worried he'll get cold at night, and it looks warm and snuggly.

He never would let me cover him with a blanket when he was in his kennel, but he seems to like being covered in this bed.  I think I'll leave him out of the kennel at nights, putting this bed right beside my side of the bed on the floor where I can reach down and pet him occasionally.

So, away we went Sunday morning.  I have to say, fortune smiled on us both going and returning.  The only real traffic tie-up we saw was on the northbound side as we went down there, so it didn't affect us; but it went on for miles.  I'm sure some of those folks sat in that mess for an hour or more.

  Cliff thought the line was probably ten miles long.  A tractor-trailer rig had jackknifed, ending up halfway on the median, and spilled white plastic pipe all over the road.  

I found this on VRBO.com.  We stayed on the right side.  It's old, but was very clean.  

Cliff settled down with his computer and a cup of coffee 

and I blue-toothed my keyboard to the iPad.

And that was the first day.