Tuesday, May 12th - On the Radio on the Road to Little Rock

I knew today was going to be another big 10 hr driving day – the good news, what was getting me through, is that it would be the last big driving day for a while.  By the end, I’d be in Little Rock and from there my explorations of the south east would begin – with everything much closer together!  The drive itself was uneventful – from the flat fields of Texas, through the rolling hills of Oklahoma to Arkansas.

I did stop briefly in Oklahoma City – I wanted to see the memorial to the Oklahoma City bombing – it was beautifully done and very moving.  

Landscape wise, I was surprised by the dense green of Arkansas – all rolling hills filled with green trees broken up occasionally with rivers that seemed to go right up to the tree line.  You couldn’t see far ahead for the first time in days and it felt almost empty.  In that way it reminded me of Galiano – where it feels like the woods just swallows the people up.  I went off a few exits early to explore and see what I could find – across a huge lake there was a small town, quite picturesque hidden amongst the trees, though with less character on the Main Street.  The pleasant, but less glamorous side of small town America.

On the long drives I do get desperate for real radio / live voices (lost CBC 30 minutes past the border) and NPR (US public radio) is limited to near the big cities.  Ever since Portland, the majority of my options fall into two categories - Country or Christian.  Country is growing on me but doesn’t meet the ‘talk radio’ criteria.  So I tried some Christian radio today ….. I found one program ‘Intentional Living’ that initially was ok – very common sense in many ways (nb for reference I’d classify myself as a spiritual Christian but not following an organized religion if that makes sense.).  However, it wasn’t long before I started to get frustrated with the fund raising aspect of the programming (encouragement for Intentional Giving to go to support Intentional Living ….) – it was just so overpowering to the programming.  Well, it must be the season, as when I switched to another station, it also seemed to be dominated by the request for money – and they had a tag line I couldn’t quite believe – “it’s not for K-Love (the radio station), but for God through K-Love ….” – you have to be kidding me ….  As you can see, it got me just a little wound up.  But wait, it gets better, I switched back to Intentional Living and heard an announcer encouraging a listener to take advantage of the radio’s prayer services specifically for people to participate in / listen to while on the road driving – a way to get a little church / prayer time into one’s busy busy life – well, for me, my reaction, how about encouraging a little Intentional Driving to ensure we will all still be living ….

It might be time for satellite soon … (and I’m done with my soapbox for now …)

But my evening recovered, I arrived in Little Rock just before 7pm – and just checked in and then headed right back out to find food.  I had heard about the River Market area as a good spot for the evenings – I found it and then very quickly found where I was meant to eat …. The Flying Fish …… A very casual spot serving local fish – crawfish, catfish, if it came out of the river, it was on the menu.  I had to try the deep fried catfish and shrimp basket complete with fries and … I know I could have had it sautéed with rice or salad, but somehow, that would have just been wrong … it was very very good and felt very very local!

For some crazy reason, I am really excited to be here in the south in the land of Bill Clinton - I can’t wait to explore more tomorrow!