December 5, 2003

• Made it to Texas with my parents. I drove most of the way, except for about 60 miles near Little Rock, Arkansas where I was just worn out.

  Originally, I was going to accompany them back to TX because dad had rented a UHaul that would be full of furniture, but then both he and mom got sick from food poisoning, so he sent my brother and his stepson off in the rental truck, while I helped nurse them back to health. When we finally set off to for Texas, sufficiently healthy to make the drive, my mom tactfully reminded me that my dad is having cataract problems in one eye. So I drove and drove and drove.

  My dad's a geologist and ornithologist, so there's always something to see and talk about along the roadside. Did you know that Nashville, Tennessee, is on a geologic dome formation, but that the underlying local limestone is quite porous and has eroded away over thousands of years, leaving Nashville in more of a bowl-type formation? And did you know that the South Harpeth river meanders far and wide within its valley, in one place making a two mile loop that comes back to within 300 yards of the previous meander, and that some industrious soul drilled a tunnel between the streambeds at this point and used the difference in water pressure to power a steel mill in 1818?

  Now you do.

  • 1:13 pm
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