Deep South - Day 1

Part of the fun of vacation for me is reading about the area where we are visiting.  One of the books this year is Biography of a River: The Living Mississippi by Edith McCall.  She begins her book with a quote from Charles Kuralt taken from his article, “Down by the River.”

Charles Kuralt

“Everything I love about America is a gift of the rivers: steamboats, pioneers, Huckleberry Finn, blue herons and snowy egrets, the Grand Canyon and the Blue Ridge hallows…jazz and catfish and ferryboats and covered bridges.  None of them would be there, in memory or in fact, without the rivers…America is a great story, and there is a river on every page of it.”

I read this while bypassing the town of Sedan, Kansas on HWY 166.  Outside the winter weary, brown prairie grass rippled in waves out from the car as far as the eye could see.  The quote seemed a fitting way to start this trip into the depths of the Deep South – a poetic beginning to a trip I took once as a child with my parents and now as a parent with my children.  Then the purpose was to visit cousins and the World’s Fair.  Now it is to spend a spring break playing together as a family.

And through it all will be the river.  We reconnect with the Arkansas River at Tulsa and then will

Tulsa, OK at Night

follow it south and east as it winds its way through the state of Arkansas.  We will watch it join the Mighty Mississippi and then follow the “Old Man” south all the way to the delta and swamps of Louisiana and on through to the shores and sands of the Gulf.

As we entered Bartlesville, a soft spring rain began to fall baptizing us the rest of the way to the hotel.  A quick stop at the Bass Pro Shop in Broken Arrow was necessary to replace Dad’s sunglasses and in anticipation of sunny days ahead.  In no time we were tucked into our beds and dreaming of the adventure ahead.

It's the kind of beginning writers dream about.  Our bags are packed and the car is jammed with enough food and snacks to occupy the stomachs of two growing teenage boys for a full week.  The Hicks’ have embarked again on the open road.  We can go anywhere and do anything with enough time and inclination.  It is freedom in its purest form and what I love best about living in America. 

Deep South – here we come.