Sept 18th

Clinton's first home

We left Arkadelphia, Arkansas intent on getting to Wichita Falls, Texas tonight so that we can get to Lubbock, Texas and the Buddy Holly Center early enough on Sunday to make it worth while – they are closed on Monday so we have to get there tomorrow – Sunday.  The first thing that happened is that we saw the signs for Hope, Arkansas and the Bill Clinton boyhood home, etc.  We had to go, having just been to the Clinton Presidential Library.  It was interesting and worth doing but it took about an hour and a half – putting us that much behind schedule to make Wichita Falls tonight.

This paragraph is for any GMC people who would be interested and anyone else can just skip it.  It was hot again and again the GMC ran cool at 180-210 degrees.  The fan is still driving me nuts though.  The ambient temperatures ran from mid-80’s at first to almost 100 by the end of the day.  It seemed that no matter what temperature was showing on the engine water temp gauge the fan would run fully engaged at low highway speed and never turn off until the highway speed got to at least 55mph.  When the ambient temperature went up the amount of time required to turn the fan off increased accordingly.  Every time, the engine temp would be at 180 degrees and the fan would run and run.  The fan running or not running had absolutely no relationship to the engine temperature being high or low.

We got to Wichita Falls by about 4:30 so we made up most, if not all, of the time we lost at Hope.  We drove on US-82, a 2-lane road, almost all the way in Texas and saw lots of signs for Texas barbeque along the way so we wanted some tonight.  In Memphis, we had asked one of the employees or volunteers at the Civil Rights Museum where to get good barbeque and they sent us to A&R’s on Third Street – it was delicious and the tab was only about $20 for two big meals.  Tonight Carol asked the lady who checked us in at the RV park and she suggested a “dive” in town that was easy to get to and had good barbeque.  This time the food was good but the service sucked.  Carol had some delicious ribs and I had the brisket, we each had an O’Douls and the bill came to $26 plus tip (a small one).  The place was a real dive too – called the Bar L.