Okay, hold onto your hat, this next statement could surprise you a little. From what we have seen so far... I would have to say that Arkansas is probably the nicest of our stop offs since the Grand Canyon. The geography is beautiful, there are hills, trees and water all over the place. Its clean and the people are actually very polite... well polite on the roads at least, its such a pleasure to drive on roads where all the other motorists drive in the Right hand side of the road so that the Left lane can be used for passing. After 10 years in Vegas I had gotten used to people using the road in a manner consistent with ownership of said road and intolerance to other who were so obviously trespassing.

While Oklahoma was very pleasant (we drove past Carrie Underwood's home town - a very small town with two road signs proudly pronouncing that she had been winner of American Idol for 2005 - "it has one traffic light") Arkansas is a little more appealing. I'm constantly amazed at how the topography changes from state to state... whats amazing is the way it changes so quickly. I'm sure for example the original Oklahoma / Arkansas border was decided by the sudden introduction ever green trees in Arkansas. It seems that while most every tree in Oklahoma was deciduous, Arkansas suddenly seems to have an equal mix of conifers, pine and acorn trees to deciduous trees. We stopped for a while to run around with the dogs and to stretch our legs for a bit at the picnic area pictured above, and I thought that we might have to leave La-Poo there. I have never seen her so happy to be playing in the leaves, sticks and pine cones. She truly belongs in Arkansas... naturally we made a few jokes at her expense involving the Ozarks, colour of her neck and the potential for her to suddenly and inexplicably lose all her teeth in an attempt to fit in.

Another thing that has definitely been obvious is the fact that we are most assuredly in the Bible Belt. The size and prime locations of religious institutions tells of community after community dedicated to worship. There is no doubt in my mind what so ever that God is big business in this part of the world... just from a real estate point of view, we quite literally drove past Billions of dollars in "God shops".

Whilst Little Rock is an agreeable spot, I think we'll probably head out tomorrow pretty early and get to Memphis... Its Sunday tomorrow and I would like to catch a game or two on TV when we get to our hotel. Its a short day tomorrow... we'll probably get there in just a few hours. But since Graceland in on the cards either tomorrow or Monday, I would like to be sure that we are booked in and comfortable with plenty of time to explore.