Mark wanted me to correct that in his previous post he said that we stayed in Atlanta, however; we actually stayed in Decatur (although I think it’s technicallly just another one of the ubiquitious suburbs of Atlanta that you’re equally as likely to get stabbed or find parking in).

This morning Rorie took us to the farmer’s market near her house. It was absolutely huge, practically a supermarket. There were 50 checkout lanes, and they had beer and wine and tons of all sorts of different produce. They also have their own bakery, butchery, whatever the equivilant of a butchery is for seafood, and even their own nuts roasting area among many other things that they do that I’ve forgotten. We were thoroughly impressed and bought a bunch of nuts, bananas, and cranberries. I also bought the most ridiculously creamy chocolate milk ever. It was whole milk, upon which they had added more milk fat, and then a ton of chocolate. It was incredibly rich, but equally delicious.

We trekked out of Atlanta with the quickness and drove pretty much straight through Alabama, aside from taking a short detour to look at this hospital that was supposed to have a picture of Jesus on the front door (according to the unique travel hotspots of the US waypoints loaded into the GPS). Unfortunately, there was no Jesus on the front door. Continuing into Mississippi, the roads immediately fell apart. I saw a sign for Elvis’s birthplace and thought “hey, why the hell not.” So we stopped at Elvis’s birthplace. In case you’re wondering, this is what Elvis’s birth house looked like: I tried to sneak into his house and the lady inside wasn’t very receptive.

We continued on with the intent to stay in Holly Springs National Forest. Getting hungry, we checked the GPS for nearby food, deciding upon a place called Cypress Grill, and hoped for the best; however, where the GPS told us the Cypress Grill was lay only vast tracts of fields that appeared to have been growing for significant time. Bummer. We were hungry, so on our way back to the highway we had to choose between a run-down “authentic Mexican restaurant” and the immediately adjacent Taco Bell. We choose the Taco Bell, which may have been the better choice between the two, no matter how sick I currently feel from it. We’ll never know. The ladies inside the Taco Bell said that we had funny accents, although I had never considered a North Carolina accent to be that different from a Mississippi accent.

Finding that the Holly Springs National Forest would be more accurately described as “the highway that runs through Holly Springs”, and finding equal disappointment at the nearby state park, we decided to just find some coffee and continue on through to Arkansas. We stopped at a Starbucks and Mark was upset that they charged for wifi. I was happy though, because the Starbucks girl was nice enough to give me free coffee. Thanks, Starbucks girl! We briefly went through Memphis and continued on and over the Mississippi. It was big, but too dark to see much of anything. We drove through the night into Arkansas, looking for Hot Springs National Park.

-rio