The long way home

I am driving home tomorrow from Oklahoma.  Before I left to come out here I knew that there was a chance of Interstate 40 being flooded.  After all, the Mississippi River was 3 miles wide when I was out here six weeks ago and there has been nothing but rain since then

This photo was taken yesterday.  Both lanes are closed now.

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The road was clear last week, but from Memphis to Little Rock there was an awful lot of water in the fields.  And during one of the rain storms I drove through, I got a glimpse of a river that appeared to be way too close to the bottom of the bridge I was driving over.

Now the interstate has flooded.  There are detours, of course.  One of them takes you 296 miles out of your way and the other is a mere 219 mile excursion.  On mostly two-lane roads.

So, I am taking another way back to Sweet Home Alabama.  I'll be driving south to Dallas and then due east to Montgomery.  This way is longer than our normal I-40 route, but hopefully without detours.

When Grandmother and Granddaddy Atkinson lived in Linden, TX, we took this route several times.  I remember one winter night during a snowstorm.  We could barely see the road, but the big trucks were speeding past us in the left-hand lane.  They knew that the road wasn't slippery, I guess, but we drove with white-knuckles the whole way.  The high temperature tomorrow in Dallas is 94 degrees so I am okay on that.

Have you ever heard of HAARP?  Me, neither, until today.  I talked to my uncle and he thinks that all of the bad/different/strange weather patterns the past few years are caused by it.  Maybe so...