Day 20: Memphis to Austin, TX: it’s a 4-state tour.

This was our looooooongest driving day yet. We left our hotel at 7:30 a.m., and rolled in to Austin at about 11:45 p.m.

Did I mention that Anja doesn’t drive? ‘Cause she doesn’t. Those gazillions of hours of driving? All me, baby.

We did stop a few times. We had wanted to drive down the coast of the Mississippi River for a while in the morning, and couldn’t find a highway that actually gave any kind of view of the River. We did find a visitor information centre, though, so we stopped to ask them. They gave us directions, and then got very excited because I’m Canadian – apparently, Mississippi is doing some kind of survey of Canadian visitors, to find out how and why they’re coming to Mississippi (I’m assuming this is because they want more Canadians to come and spend tourist dollars, and not because they’re trying to figure out how to stem the tide of invading Canadians or anything…) and I was the first Canadian she’d seen since the survey came out. I agreed to fill out the survey form, and she told me that it was available in two languages: French, or Spanish.

Uh, Spanish? Ooookay…

Luckily, my French is good enough to say I came to Mississippi par voiture, and stayed there for zero jours, and spent moins de cent dollars. And one of the questions was actually in English. So weird. Mississippi needs editors, methinks.

We also stopped in a little town in Louisiana to see the Bonnie and Clyde Ambush Museum. It’s a funny little museum, and a bit gruesome, but very detailed. And the man who runs in – Linton Hinton! – is the son of one of the police officers who ambushed Bonnie and Clyde! He is full of stories, but his desire to tell us stories conflicted slightly with my intense desire to make it to Austin before I fell asleep at the wheel. I think we left a little to fast for him, but an HOUR was more than the time I had meant to allot to him in the first place!

We routed through Waco, because I had hoped to see the town and maybe any memorial marker they might have, but it was about 10 p.m. and there was no way we were stopping. Interestingly, the highway from Waco to Austin – about an hour and a half? – is essentially one loooooong urban sprawl. It was unexpected for me, because I didn’t think Austin was that big. Urban sprawl is also not what I think of when I think of Texas – unless I’m thinking of Dallas, I guess, but that’s entirely Larry Hagman’s fault

We checked in to the Austin Motel, and, as usual, collapsed into stupephoria.