Bullet Points Three and Four Filled Out

• Stay in cheap hotel, discuss lack of dedication to hitchhiking/tent-camping.

The guys in the pickup truck took us as far as Vicksburg, and according to our estimations it was about another 350 miles to Dallas. It wasn’t quite dark yet, so we tried thumbing it some more. Nearby was a place called the Deluxe Inn, and a grocery store. That Deluxe Inn looked so tempting, and so much more comfortable than a tent would be. We called and found out it was $45 a night, and we made up our minds that if we didn’t get a ride we would stay there and stop off at the grocery store for dinner and travel food for the next day.

And then we got a ride. A very nice retired man said he wasn’t going far, but he could at least get us across the Mississippi. We mentioned to him that we’d considered the Greyhound (because at this point we were already a little concerned that we wouldn’t make it to Plano in time), and he was kind enough to drive us by the station to find out how much it would cost. It would be over $80, and that was too much, so he went on and took us across the river.

The place he left us was rather deserted. Down the road a little ways was a gas station and an “Adult Superstore.” By now it was pretty much dark and there were no streetlights at the highway entrance, and hardly any cars entering there anyway. We felt a little discouraged, because we probably wouldn’t get any farther that night, and now we were without the Deluxe Inn we’d already made up our minds about. We walked down to the gas station, though, to see if we could find anyone headed west.

We were hungry so we bought and ate some sandwiches, and then we walked around where truckers were parked to see if any were leaving. No one was, or if they were they weren’t headed west, and we felt shy about asking regular car drivers. We overcame that at one point and asked some people who were pumping gas and the woman we asked got a deer-in-the-headlights look on her face and suddenly seemed to lose the ability to speak, so we decided to try thumbing it at the gas station exit. We decided we would take the next ride either direction and if it happened to be east, we’d try and get back to the motel.

And that’s where we ended up. A couple around our age picked us up and took us directly to the motel parking lot. The couple was nice, though at one point we were afraid they were going to ask us to get out of the car on the side of the highway, but that’s a story to tell in person, so ask us when you see us next.

We got the cheapest room they had, which was tiny but all we needed. We got to watch some House and relax and take showers with good water pressure for the first time in two weeks. It was nice, but with our travel budget, extravagant and unnecessary. We could have just pitched our tent somewhere nearish to that gas station and started out hitching early the next morning. I don’t know that I believe in karma, but the fact that the next day we couldn’t get another ride out of Vicksburg and tried for 4 hours to do so before giving up and taking the bus makes me wonder how different things would have been if we’d been truly dedicated to the hitchhiking and tent camping from the beginning. We would have left on Monday instead of Tuesday and based on the time we made getting back to New Orleans, I’m sure we would have made it to Plano by midday Wednesday or earlier.

• Greyhound journey to Mesquite, TX, where my cousin Michael picked us up.

I’ll just tack this bullet point onto the end here because there isn’t much to say about it. My dad and his internet skills helped us figure out when the next bus was leaving Vicksburg, and we called Michael and Danielle to make sure arriving by bus would work for them. They generously offered to pick us up in Mesquite, so we took 8 hour bus ride and made it there by a little after 10pm Wednesday. Just in time for Thanksgiving.