Middle of Nowhere

Now I know why Hanson's first CD was entitled "Middle of Nowhere."  It's because they were from Oklahoma and any where you go in Oklahoma is, in fact, the middle of nowhere.  Yes, I was a Hanson fan back in middle school, and yes, I did go see them in concert my junior year of college, and yes, I enjoyed it.  Moving on.  My mom and I cruised through Arkansas and arrived at the border to Nowhere, USA, the state formerly known as OK.  It was about 7:30 PM and we decided to drive through the last hour of daylight assuming we would be able to easily find a hotel.  We casually waved off the exit we passed at the state border, deeming those hotels sub par and confident in our ability to find a better nights rest elsewhere.  Little did we know that we were saying goodbye to civilization as we knew it.  You might think it refreshing to know that there are places in this world untouched by civilization, but that thought is only cool if you are sitting in the comfort of your own home within walking distance of a grocery store, gas station, and Super Wal-Mart.  It's not so cool to be driving through this strange, uninhabited land when you are tired, hungry, and desperately need a place to sleep.  All the billboards advertising Dairy Queen and La Quinta have been sucked into the vacuum of a lost world we didn't know we were leaving behind when we crossed the invisible state line.  If it hadn't been for the full moon we would have been lost in the pitch black wilds of Oklahoma.  We had almost given up and assented to the fact that we weren't going to find a hotel before we reached Texas, when we saw a crop of lights on the horizon!  Now keep in mind that the horizon in Oklahoma is about 30 miles away from you so we still had a bit of a drive, but life did exist!  Life in the form of Wal-Mart that is.  Not a hotel, not a restaurant, not a gas station...a Wal-Mart.  Who shops at this Wal-Mart I will never know because I don't think the people in Arkansas are coming all the way out here to get their toilet paper.  This two and a half hour saga does have a somewhat happy ending.  We eventually happened across a truck stop motel around 10 o'clock that night that was shockingly vacant.  So we found a bed...but no continental breakfast.