You Can't Get Lost

 I started the day going up in the Golden Spike Tower at the Bailey Classification Yard in North Platte, NE.   The purpose of a classification yard is to take a train coming into the yard and sort the cars to make up trains to go to different locations.  Consider a train coming from Cheyenne.  It may be made up of cars from any state south, west and north of Cheyenne.  Say five cars from Phoenix may need to go to three locations on the east coast.  Three cars from Portland need to go to three east coast cities.  Those eight cars are joined and travel together from Cheyenne.  When they reach here, the cars are uncoupled and then pushed over a 34 foot high hill, called the "hump",and they can run down off the hill and be diverted to 64 tracks to make up trains to go to different locations.   The trains come in on the tracks on the upper left hand side of the photo.  The cars get routed to the yellow tracks where they are uncouple...

 

My original thought was I was going to leave Little Rock fairly early in the morning and get to Petit Jean state park early on. Then I could set up and, most importantly, check the internet signal. I had a zoom meeting with the group traveling to Greece this June and, as it was the first meeting, I didn't want to miss it. If the signal had not been there or if it was too weak, I would have had to drive to the next big town and find a McDonalds or something and I wanted to give myself plenty of time to do that. But the drive to the park was just over an hour, check-in wasn't until 3:00 and that would still leave me plenty of time to check the signal and take off if I needed to.   So I stayed.  Instead, I went with Miriam and Phil and their daughter Katie to their church.  It was huge!  I really felt "small town" there, mouth and eyes open.  In one building, there is a large (2000 seat?) auditorium, a smaller, more traditional church, a restaurant open dai...

Phil and Miriam had a full day of activities planned out.   Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site Little Rock Central High School was the site of the first major test of the Federal Government's right to demand desegregation in American education versus state rights to self determination.  In the fall of 1957, nine black students attempted to attend the all-white Central High School.   " The controversy in Little Rock was the first fundamental test of the United States resolve to enforce African-American civil rights in the face of massive southern defiance during the period following the  Brown v. Board of Education  decisions. When President Dwight D. Eisenhower was compelled by white mob violence to use federal troops to ensure the rights of African American children to attend the previously all-white school, he became the first president since the post-Civil War Reconstruction period to use federal troops in support of African Amer...

 The trip to Little Rock had two parts.  The first half of the drive was on a lot of back roads, twisty, hilly, narrow roads, narrow bridges, until I got to Texarkana, when I hit the Interstate that went the rest of the way into Little Rock.  The second half was much easier than the first, but the first was more scenic, if you can take your eyes off the narrow road and look around.  Really, everything was fine until the fuel light came on again and I had to look for a station.  After yesterday's adventure, I decided I wasn't going to be cheap and I would just look for a regular ole truckstop.   I saw there was a Pilot station on a highway sign  so I decided I would go there.  But when I pulled off the Interstate, the station was not along the frontage road and, indeed, I couldn't see it at all.  OK, don't stress it.  There's got to be something along the frontage road.  But there wasn't.  But I did see the Pilot sign on th...

It was supposed to be an easy day.  I'd dump my tanks before I left, hook up and take off.  Head north out of Conroe on the Interstate to just north of Huntsville and then cut off to the north east and drive to Marshall, TX and stay at a Harvest Host there, Enoch's Stomp Vineyard and Winery.  And things went pretty smoothly on the drive.  As I got to Marshall, my fuel light came on and I started looking for a place that had diesel.  I was on a four lane highway when I saw a convenience store that had a diesel price on the sign and a very quick glance showed a set of truck pumps on the far side.  So, from driving 60 mph, I slowed down quickly, had my turn signals on and started to turn into the street right before the station.  The traffic was fairly heavy at 4:30 and so I was turning as quickly as I felt comfortable so I wouldn't slow traffic down too much behind me.  But, as I started my turn, a pickup drove up into the left turn lane on the stre...