Road Trips: Denver to Arkansas

My first road trip when I was 6 years old was to go along with my Grandma to her new house in Arkansas. I wasn’t quite sure why she was moving to Arkansas at the time but I decided to go along. My uncle was going with her too. To give some context, most of my Mom’s family all lived in one house in the Denver area and when my Mom married my Dad in 1994 the whole house seemed to leave all at once. Grandma had met a new man named Ken Nelson, my Uncle had a new wife and my Mom had a new husband. That just left my Aunt alone in that house.  She got married and moved 4 years later.

We packed ourselves into my uncle’s F-150 and started the 14-hour drive to Fayetteville, Arkansas.  In the days before iPads and smartphones, I had to keep myself busy with little paper gaming books. You used a special pen to solve mazes and puzzles. I also had a little whiteboard to draw on. 

There are two routes to Northwest Arkansas that most people take. There’s the route on I-70 to Kansas City and down US 71 (which is now I-540 but it wasn’t built in those days) and the other way through Oklahoma via US 412 through Tulsa. Old 71 passed through Missouri and Joplin and then into Arkansas. This route would become important in 2001 during the great ice storm incident that I’ll get to shortly. We usually took the Tulsa route, it was more direct but slowly because 412 had not been widened to 4 lanes at that time. I-40 was too far south to be useful for getting to where we needed to go. It’s two hours north from I-40 through Fort Smith to get to Fayetteville.

We traveled through the night and I experienced my first time change from Mountain time to Central time. At first, I thought that we were crossing the international date line but Grandma assured, it was the same day we were just one hour forward.  That would be the first of many time changes in my life.

I would spend much time in the back of cars driving back and forth between Denver and Fayetteville. The drive is fairly unremarkable. Most of the big landmarks don’t exist anymore. There used to be a tower near Olathe, where you could see 4 states on a clear day. There was also a museum where you could see “the world’s largest prairie dog” which was actually a concrete statue of the familiar rodent. I always have a chuckle at the sign for “Dunkard Brethren Church” outside of Hays. I used to think it read “drunkard.” Prairie dogs once dominated the landscape in the midwest. When Louis and Clark first traveled across the Great American Desert to survey the Louisiana Purchase (you can look into the history of the purchase of the Louisiana Territory if you are interested in delving into its background), they noted the massive cities that the prairie dogs had built and the hundreds of rodents that lived there.

Kansas is not an exciting state. The Western portion of the state can be a bit hilly but the central and eastern portions are very flat. The highway stretches out for miles. It’s usually under construction and many a driver has been frustrated by being stuck in a single lane of traffic, surrounded by orange barrels and cones and no sign of any construction activity insight.

This can be not only frustrating but also dangerous, as it is easy for drivers to become bored and lose attention to the road, leading to accidents. However, if you do find yourself a victim of this type of situation, then finding a good car accident lawyer can be vital. This is because they will help you claim the compensation you are owed, which can be used to pay for any treatment incurred and replace your damaged vehicle. 

Along the highway, you can pass by the towns of Hays, Colby, Olathe, and Salina. Many of these small towns wouldn’t exist but for the interstate and the truckers that stop in at hotels and truck stops. Most of these towns started out as small farming communities in the 19th century and seeing as their children decided to trade farm life for something else, these small towns cling to the interstate as their main source of trade.

Kansas is littered with small towns with the same story but no interstate to save them. Some still are small farming communities but the American family farm has seen better days, so has rural Kansas. So on this trip, you drop down I-35 in Salina and in Wichita Falls begin your journey through Oklahoma.

Eastern Oklahoma is somehow less exciting than Kansas. After Tulsa, there isn’t much out there. There is more now but back then it was mostly large power transmission lines and a few gas stops.  However, toward the eastern edge, the ozarks begin and the land get very interesting. Arkansas itself is a beautiful state. The Natural State has some stunning formations thanks to the ancient Ozarks. Like other mountain ranges in the Eastern part of the U.S. at one time the mountains were as high as the Rockies but millions of years of erosion have whittled them down. The engineering of the roads and highways around the mountains are truly stunning and there are some great views to be had in that part of the state. There are some great RV parks to stay at, which can be helpful when it comes to a road trip of this scale. Eureka Springs offers the opportunity for water sports and relaxation in the natural hot springs. The War Eagle market is a popular craft destination. From time to time, Grandma would go and sell her beadwork and crochet work there. 

My parents had older cars when I was young. My Mom drove a 1970 Ford Bronco until 1996 when they bought the van I had until 2013. My Dad drove a 1970 AMC Javelin until 2004 or so. The car had been passed around his family for years. This was the car that he and his siblings learned to drive in the 80s. It was a tank and made of heavy American steel. You couldn’t hurt the thing. Unfortunately, it had a bad transmission from Japan and the only way to keep the cars on the road was to do an LS swap on them. Dad sold it to a man in California. Meanwhile, since their cars were old, they would rent various cars to get back and forth to Arkansas. Mom’s favorite car to rent was a Dodge Intrepid. It was big and wide and had a big trunk. I didn’t understand why that was important at the time. Having packed a few cars in my day, I appreciate a roomy trunk. This trip would happen multiple times in my childhood until my Grandma’s passing in 2003. Our last good Christmas was rather eventful and included an unwanted icy guest.

Christmas and the ice storm 

When I was a kid, we would switch off Christmases. One Christmas, Grandma would drive her big lincoln up to Denver and the next year we would make that trip to Arkansas. In 2001, I was 13 and a half and a terrible ice storm hit the entire area. This was also the same year that Grandma’s new gas stove went out leaving us with no way to cook Christmas dinner. Mom and Dad made the trip into town, which was 45 minutes in normal driving, to get an electric appliance to cook some things in. The doors on all the cars were caked with ice and the power lines hung low to the road-heavy with ice. Many people in the area went weeks without power as they repaired the lines that could not manage the strain. That’s one of the things you learned about Arkansas pretty quick, everything was old and breaking down. The state was behind in infrastructure in a variety of ways and near as I can tell it has been hard-pressed to catch up. A bad ice storm is a good reminder of the complete lack of development in the state despite being the hometown of Wal-Mart and several trucking companies. We had fun in the snow and the ice and we eventually got out of the state. 412 going through Oklahoma was closed and that was one of the first times we took old 71 through Missouri up to Kansas City and then onto I-70 and out of the ice and back to Denver. This crossing Kansas on I-70 would happen more times in my life but that is for future stories.  

The people

A few years ago, I made a music film with a street musician named Stan St. Louis and he wrote a song called Oklahoma In Her Eyes.  For him, he felt like Oklahoma was the place he wanted to live. Bear in mind that this man was from upstate New York. He came from a troubled background but had a fascinating story. I never thought about Oklahoma being a perfect place. I had crossed it so many times. I had another later connection to Oklahoma. One of my patrons that helped me make the 2012 Denver Fashion Week possible was from Tulsa. Her family had lived there for years and she had married there too. She eventually moved to Denver to be closer to family and lived in a beautiful apartment a few blocks off Colfax in a remodeled schoolhouse. When you pass through a place as many times I have, you forget that real people do live and work there. They raise children and live their lives there. 

Being smart on road trips

Going on road trips are all fun and games until it’s not anymore. So be smart about it. Have a detailed travel plan that addresses everything from mapping your route to inspecting the condition of your vehicle. No one wants to think about it, but be smart and think about potential accidents on the road. From a flat tire to a write-off, and having a car accident lawyer at hand in such instances is important to protecting your rights and providing appropriate legal guidance. Being proactive and informed can allow you to enjoy driving those road trips knowing you’re prepared for whatever may come your way.

So too was the case in Arkansas. Arkansas comes from a french interpretation of what the native Quapaw called their land. Near as I can tell it has no relation to Kansas which is pronounced differently. On our first trip, we had arrived in a new state after 14 hours of driving across the Great Plains. Most people think the Great Plains are boring as hell. I still think they are boring but as I’ve grown older I’ve begun to appreciate their unique beauty. Watching native grasses or even cultivated fields of wheat wave in a stiff breeze is easily as beautifully as any ocean. It is unlike anything else in the United States and is as easily stunning as the greatest art in the greatest museums in the world.  The people are sturdy, tough, quiet, friendly, and hardworking. They are the people that keep this country going in all ways. They are essential employees. They drive the trucks, grow the food, make the parts, and do the things that make modern civilization possible. They don’t complain about much and they get up every day at 5:00 am or earlier to go to work. They often work long hours but often feel a sense of accomplishment at the tasks they are paid to do. Sadly, like much of the rest of America, most of the good jobs have long gone elsewhere.