Dallas Road Trip Wrap up
I am back from last week’s road trip to Dallas. In an earlier post I talked about the first night where we drove from Albany to Buffalo. The next day was our longest drive of the trip. Our trip was from Buffalo to Louisville, Kentucky. It took us around 8.5 hours with a quick stop for lunch. We still had enough time to enjoy dinner at a nice Cuban restaurant and head downtown. We went to an area called 4th Street Live. In case you couldn’t figure it out, it’s on 4th St. in the city. This area was really fun, kind of like Pearl St. in Albany except way better and bigger. They close off a three block section of the street so there are no cars and you are able to walk between bars with drinks. The nice thing is that there is variety in the bars and clubs. You have everything from regular dance clubs to a duelin’ piano bar, comedy club, Hard Rock and a true English Pub to name a few. We spent the majority of the time in the piano bar, though we did walk around and check out the other places.
The next day we were back on the road with our shortest leg of the trip. We drove from Louisville to Memphis. Our one goal in Memphis was to have an authentic Memphis BBQ dinner. After asking several local people we finally decided on Interstate BBQ. This location was the original one that started the now famous Neely’s BBQ name.
Dinner was great, beef ribs with cole slaw and a Bud (not even Bud Light). Jason got Rib Tips and Pulled Beef with potato salad. After dinner we headed to Beale St. The area around Beale St. can be a little dicey but nothing too bad. Again the main section of Beale St. was off-limits to cars and had an open-container policy. The street is basically lined with bars, places to get drinks (you know the yards with lanyards and live music. I don’t know if it is the original but there is a Coyote Ugly bar towards the end of the street. We didn’t stay out too late as we were really tired and needed to get up early the next day for our final leg of the trip.
The next morning we had an early breakfast and then headed out for Dallas. The trip wasn’t overly long but we had to get to Dallas in time to pick up the keys for the apartment. The drive went really fast, we made in there in plenty of time. Here are some observations from the portion of the drive from Arkansas to Dallas:
- They are not very original with naming towns. There is one town called TexArkana. I imagine the naming of the town went something like this: “we are in Texas”, “no we are in Arkansas.” OK, split the difference and call it Texarkana.
- There are also towns called Arkadelphia, Bald Knob, and Beaver (I found the last two on the Arkansas Wikipedia page)
- There are long stretches in Texas where there is nothing around Rt. 30 (the main highway from Arkansas to Dallas).
- People are very eager to stop and offer assistance for other cars on the side of the road. Perhaps because of the previous bullet point.
We finally arrived at Jason’s new apartment. We picked up the keys and unloaded what we had in the car. We had a hotel room for that last night as the movers were coming the following morning. By the point both Jason and I were beat, we grabbed some dinner at Bone Daddy’s then went to bed. We didn’t get much rest the next day. The movers were at the apartment bright and early. After everything was unloaded I helped Jason start the unpacking process. We also went out to pick up various things he needed for the new place. While driving around town I did notice an REI store less than 10 minutes from his place. We definitely made a stop there to pick up some stuff.
All in all we had a great trip. I remember September seemed so far away during the summer, then all of a sudden I was packing up for the trip. The next thing I knew we were waking up before dawn to get me to the airport for the flight home. Good luck Jason, and enjoy.
Here are some additional pics from the trip. I took some footage, I am trying to get a small movie together.
Tags: travel