We got on the road a little after 7:00 this morning; the main hold-up was trying to get Frannie to eat.  Two hours later, when we found ourself in a major traffic slow-down, I rolled down my window and asked the woman in the car next to me what time it was. Sure enough, instead of 9:00 it was only 8:00 (which explained the notice at the motel desk yesterday about it being in the Eastern Time Zone.) We were heading into Nashville, so I made a comment about rush hour traffic - but the driver said there was an accident about 10 miles ahead. At the rate we were (barely) going it was going to be quite a long while until we could get to a place for a bathroom break. When I told Marilyn she might eventually have to just pull onto the shoulder (unlike back home, here there is no shortage of foliage to squat behind) she nixed that idea because of all the poison Ivy out here. Sigh...

Later, when it was my shift to drive, I started out making good time... until we hit some (more) road construction.  Traffic backed up for miles while the two lanes merged into one, and with the seemingly endless stop and creep, stop and creep, we lost almost another hour.  At least the weather started out good today.  We expect to encounter heavy rain tomorrow and so had hoped to eat up a substantial number of miles today, but these traffic delays did not help at all.  I did get to drive over the Mississippi River into Arkansas, and the big question was how far across that state we'd get today.

Around 4:00, when we were still about an hour from Texarkana (yes, we'd arrive just in time for rush hour) the clouds that had been building all day started to do their thing.  At least the rain washed off the bugs we had collected since I cleaned off the windshield at our gas stop earlier today.  Unfortunately we were heading into the front (Don said it's been raining and raining and raining there, with flash flood warnings) so we figured it was going to get worse before it got better - and with many, many miles still to go.

At 5:20 we crossed into Texas.  While we still had almost 500 miles to go, psychologically it was a boost.  Within an hour, as expected, the rain started coming down harder and harder.  About the time we decided it would be prudent to stop for the night at the first opportunity the weather suddenly cleared considerably.  So we kept driving, and stopped for the night in the vicinity of Dallas.  Only 350 miles to go tomorrow!