arkansas

We departed Little Rock, Arkansas this morning and proceeded through Memphis, Tennessee, to Nashville, a city which is described as “the Athens of the South”—and it has a full-scale replica of the Parthenon to boot! Complete with restored friezes and metopes. Man, is that awesome. Apparently there’s a big gold and ivory statue of Athena Parthenos inside, just like there used to be in the original; we may just have to go back before we leave town tomorrow.

Remember, the full photo gallery is here; there are quite a few photos from today’s travels. Here are some of my favourites:

This morning, we saw the Alamo in downtown San Antonio. I remember learning about it in my history classes as a high-schooler, and I saw it referenced more times than I can count on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—as summarized perfectly in the Cynic’s Corner:

LAUGHINGSTOCKS OF THE WEEK: I’ve heard enough about the Alamo; how about you? Miles and Julian have become jokes; it seems like all they’ve done this season is play Alamo and/or get made fun of for playing Alamo. And I’ve got a bad feeling about the “moat” discussion that they had with Quark, namely that O’Brien will decide, “Quark’s right! We can’t build a moat around the station, but we can use a <tech> <tech> <tech> to create a <tech> <tech> <tech> around the station!”

So yeah, at any rate, there was the Alamo. A big battle was fought there. The white people lost. But then they won in the end because they remembered the Alamo, so I guess it all worked out. Also, there’s totally archaeology going on there! They’re uncovering bits of frescoes in the surviving walls that they didn’t even know were there until a few years ago.

We continued on from San Antonio through Austin, Dallas, and Texarkana. Two thoughts kept occurring to me:

1. Texas is simply too gol-dang big.
2. This part of the world has very questionable policies when it comes to naming towns. Hope? Italy? Texarkana? Arkadelphia??

Anyway, here are a few of today’s photos—as always, the full gallery is awaiting your browser.

Next stop: Nashville, Tennessee!