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By 11:00 PM I'm waiting in the Tucson, Arizona bus station for the 11:45 bus to Dallas. It's not too busy but there are several people waiting for the bus. This is the bus that goes from Los Angeles to Dallas so it's always pretty full. At 11:40 I'm in the front seat. So cool. My favorite seat. There are a few empty seats, but I'm still lucky to get the front one this far into a schedule. We pull out into I-10 heading east. The first part of a trip is always the most exciting. No matter how banal the destination (if there is such a destination) I get a little shiver when the trip starts. I get comfortable and try to sleep though I do more dozing on a bus than anything. It is soothing to shut your eyes and listen to the hum of the road but I always feel like I'm going to miss something if I fall asleep. A couple hours later we pull into the truck stop at San Simon, Arizona where we have a short break. It feels good to stretch and use a real bathroom. The toilets on the buses are kept much nicer than several years ago, but when a few dozen people have been using one tiny toilet for several hours, it gets a little grungy. One guy will be getting off at Lordsburg to go to Silver City. He looks like a native american and says he's just getting out of the army after twenty years and going home. He also smells like he's been drinking. A little celebrating perhaps. Most of the passengers stay asleep, and I must have fallen asleep soon after because I next remember pulling into the El Paso station in time for breakfast. I totally missed New Mexico but it's nice to see Texas after six years. We all get off feeling a bit groggy. This is a cleaning stop so we have an hour and everyone has to get off. There's a nice little cafe and the coffee is very welcome. A little tooth brushing and spot cleaning and we're loaded back on. The bus has a few less people on it. Very nice. I often catch this schedule running west to Los Angeles and, no matter when I get on, it's always full. It's 7:40 AM and the sun is shining. Even though I didn't get much sleep I feel pretty good. We can see Mexico in the distance. We head into the hill country and there are clouds everywhere. Texas has been hit hard by floods so I'm wondering if we'll run into any. The mountains to the north and south have clouds and fog covering much of them. A black lady across the aisle is coming from Los Angeles to Dallas to see her daughter. They had a motorhome but had to sell it as her husband couldn't drive anymore, so she takes the bus to Dallas now. She said they got quite a bit of money for the good, solid furniture they bought many years ago, but she misses it, even though the retirement apartments are so much easier and they have lots of friends there. The mountains to the north are quite large. The driver says he hunts deer here. He also says that his wife hates it when he actually gets one. We just drive by the Sierra Blanca stop and go on. It's just a little town stretching along in the desert. The driver says that the deer come down and get into the garbage cans. There is a big fight right now as this is where the government wants to store nuclear waste. The driver says that it's much too close to the interstate, and I agree with him. There are several caves in the bluffs further along the interstate. One of them is quite large. Our next stop is Van Horn which is a pachage express by McDonalds. A road goes north from here to Guadalupe National Park. Van Horn has a lot of 50s frame houses with cars in the yard. The couple behind me are Armenian and have five children with them from grade school to high school. She has an foreign accent but he has a Brooklyn accent. They often talk in Armenian. They are going back to New York City as she has ovarian cancer and wants to go to the hospital there. Their car gave out and they can't afford plane tickets for all of them. She is in pain and is taking a lot of pain pills. I wonder later if it wouldn't have been cheaper, and easier on her, to rent a car, but don't think of it at the time. In the distance it's desert blue and pink with olive accents and the clouds are smudging all of it. We still have arid land plants but are getting more grass as we get into the plains. Almost an hour past Van Horn we turn onto I-20 and head northeast toward Abilene. The dirt is yellow now and the horizon has flattened out. A train is a little ways off. The rails follow the highway, or to be more accurate, the highways followed the railroads. The sun is out and there are fluffy, white clouds above us making black patches on the scrub. On the horizon the clouds run together and look less welcoming. The next stop is Pecos and we follow I-20 Business past junk yards and empty stores. We stop at the Trailways station. It looks shabby, like the rest of the town. Things are greener now and bushier as we cross the Pecos River. We stay on I-20 Business to Barstow which looks less junky but much the same. We don't stop at there but go on. The interstate stretches out ahead of us flat to the horizon. Gazing at the highway rolling out ahead of us is hypnotizing. We pull up beside a convenience store in Monahans, Texas. A nice little west Texas town and, like the rest of them, the busiest place is the convenience store. At times it seems like west Texas is just the parallel highway and rails dotted with small towns. Past Monahans the land gets hummocky like giant gophers had been busy. The hummocks are explained when we see a sign to Monahans Sand Hills State Park. Maybe they were sand dunes at one time. Odessa is the next town and the first one of any size. The bus station is a nice one and I get a good picture of a TNM&O bus. Odessa has a large medical center and a large, active downtown. We stay on I-20 Business to Midland. Everything is so flat and in the brown of the plains are golf courses and manufactured homes for sale. We pass a sign to the Petroleum Museum. There are lots of new motels and even a few skyscrapers rising up from the flat land. We stop quickly at the bus station and don't even get off. A little while late we stop at Big Springs. Across the street is the city hall that looks like Arabian towers. Many of the building are made from yellow brick. We pass dried out cotton fields. More trees are planted around houses. The land is a little more rolling but the interstate is still straight and seems to go on forever. The ride across Texas always seems like one of the longest rides because there is so little variety and the small towns look alike. More and more cotton fields and the land is becoming red. Texas red clay. I knew it as Oklahoma red clay and it used to get in my children's clothes and never came out. A natural dye. There are oilwells pumping away. At Colorado City we stop at a Diamond Shamrock gas station. Soon after the little girl across the aisle throws up. Poor thing. Poor mother. Such a hard thing to clean up. They've been visiting the father's family in Texas and are on their way back to Chicago. The little girls has just had too much junk to eat. We exit on TX-70 to Sweetwater , our next stop and a nice little town. It has more yellow brick and a nice marble courthouse. It's after 5:00 pm and the sky is eggshell blue with rippled clouds and looks gorgeous. We see more cottonfields and some oil refineries on our way to Abilene, which is our supper stop. It's good to get off for a whole hour instead of the bits and pieces we've had for most of the day. Usually it's just enough to stretch our legs and grab a cup or coffee or a sandwich to eat on the bus. I get some supper then go outside to watch the mist that's over the town. Approaching Eastland we got off on TX-206 and then east on TX-6 to the bus stop and then TX-112 back to I-20. I doze off until the lights of Fort Worth wake me. We stop there for just a few minutes and then on to Dallas. It's lights all the way as we weave around the interstates. At Dallas we all get off as this is the end of the run for this bus. People are transfering to all points east. This is the home base for Greyhound and they really need a larger bus station. It is very, very crowded and I have about an hour to wait for my next bus. The line is already forming so I use the bathroom, grab a snack and get in line. There are already quite a few people in front of me. Finally we load and I get a seat just a few back. We watch them load our luggage as Dallas is one of the places where the luggage is transferred for us. Several of us see them wheeling out luggage toward another bus so a couple of guys jump off and yell at them to bring it back. I understand this is not uncommon in the Dallas station and while it is nice not having to lug your baggage to the next bus, it does make me nervous. The luggage is finally on correctly and we take off. It's nearly midnight and we all settle back to get some sleep. I waken at Tyler as we leave the interstate on US-69 to Tyler and US-271 back. I go back to sleep and miss the Louisiana border as we continue along I-20. Shreveport, Louisiana is the next stop where I jump off to use the bathroom. The buses are lined up two deep and the place is bustling between 3:00 and 4:00 am. In the southwest you see a lot of hispanics but now it's black. We're in the south now. I remember when I moved to Tucson, how strange it was to see so few blacks. I felt like I was back in Mexico. I go back to sleep until Talullah. The sky is rosy and mists are rising over the fields. We left the desert behind in the dark. The land is flat and beautiful. The mists are so heavy you can hardly see the fields in places. I sit there half asleep watching the mist start to glow with the sun. I-20 crosses the Mississippi River into Vicksburg, Mississippi. We pass signs to the Vicksburg Battlefield National Park and a Battlefield Mall. A semi with the name Covenant Transport passes. They take their religion and their wars seriously in the south. There are thick strands of trees along the highway. We pass the Natchez Trace Highway. It's 8:00 AM and I need coffee. At the Vicksburg bus stop they had only coke and stale sandwiches. We get to Jackson and have a breakfast stop. It feels good to have some breakfast and coffee and clean up. The bus station is soon full of people waiting. Our bus is about half an hour late, but I'm glad to have a chance to walk around a little and stretch my legs. We get on I-55 south to I-20 east and US-49. A few miles later US-49 leaves us and we ride through walls of trees. They are beautiful though I recall from 1994 that I felt closed in after a while the last time I drove through the east. I prefer to be able to see farther, which is another reason I enjoy the bus since I'm up higher. My head aches from not getting coffee till five hours after I usually do. I really need to get something for times this happens. maybe chocolate covered coffee beans. Mmh! I wouldn't even have to wait for a caffeine fit. Everything is green, with no fall color yet. Good, I hope that I will hit the color as I head north. We're in Bienville National Forest now. We take MS-35 to Forest and US-80 east through Forest. It's a nice neat little town with trees lining the road. The bus stop is at a Snack & Gas. A lady who is moving from Las Vegas to here gets off along with ten huge pieces of luggage. The driver unloads them onto the sidewalk and then she wants him to carry them into the convenience store. She gets a little huffy when he refuses. First of all the drivers don't carry your luggage, second, it would take him quite a while and he has a schedule to keep, and there really isn't room for them inside anyway. We live with her still muttering. We're on US-80 still and passing fields with big shredded wheat rolls in them. It's nice to get off the interstate and see a less homogenous view. We pass some nice ranch houses and then a group of old mobile homes. We get behind a car and can't pass because of the rolling hills. There are mixed pines and oak trees. We go under the interstate and continue to Newton. The bus stop in Newton is at an E-Z Stop. There didn't seem to be a downtown, just a long strip along the highway. We continue on the Meridian which is a good sized town. Meridian has a great bus station which is combined with the Amtrak station. While we're there Amtrak stopped and a freight train came by. In the field next to the station there was a fair going on. We're running late and I only have time to grab a cup of coffee. We head northeast on I-20/I-59. At the Alabama border we get off onto US-80 again and head east toward Montgomery. The trees range through every shade of green, some brown and even a few reds. We pass a site that says it was reforested in 1988. It's almost all pine with a few oaks on the edge. They seem to already be a good size but these will never bee as large as the old forest they replaced. AL-28 joins us for a few miles and then leaves us as we hit the four lane leading into Demopolis. We turn onto residential streets and well cared for white frame houses with porches. The bus stop is at a Citgo station. There is a padlock on the bathroom door and it is filthy. We come out on US-43 which stays with us a little ways after we turn east on US-80 again. Demopolis is quite a large town with several motels in good condition. AL-69 runs with us for a few miles then we continue on to Uniontown. Uniontown is just a drive by. No one is waiting. Its a little scruffier than Demopolis. I also noticed that most of the people I saw in Demopolis were white and most of the people I see in Uniontown are black. This is great. I had no idea we were going to get off the interstate for this long and wander through Alabama. There are more cows and cotton, small farms and fancy farms. The land is rolling and so green. AL-14 joins us as we're approaching Selma and then leaves us as we turn south and join with AL-22. The bus station has a pull through, and I get off for just a minute to take a picture of an interesting house across the road. The driver, who was black, asked what I was writing down and I explained that I was making notes on the trip and something to remember which picture was which. He said he would tell me something to write down. He pointed to the Edmund Pettis Bridge we came up to it and said it was the bridge where the Selma to Montgomery walk started in 1965. He then talked about the walk and pointed out places such as the church where the first marcher was killed. No one was ever charged for that. I had read about the march but it made it so much more real to ride on the road it followed. I really appreciated him pointing it out to me. There has been a lot history along this section of US-80. As well as being the route of the march there are signs that this is the Desoto Trail and the Jefferson Davis Highway. None of the three show the finer side of whites of European extraction. We are truly a stubborn and stiff necked people who need a knock on the head to look at what we are doing wrong. Soon AL-21 joins us as we enter Montgomery and then we get on I-65 north into the downtown. Soon we're on US-82 and then into the bus station. The bus station is very nice and clean but the food service is incredibly slow and not very good. I'm also getting a bit irritated at how difficult it is to get nonfat milk. Even lowfat is not available at most bus stations in the south. After a meal stop and a new driver we left again on I-65 north and east on I-85. At Opelika the station is closed and the driver just checks for packages. US-280 and US-29 join us for a few miles. Still on I-85 we enter Georgia. We get off on GA-109 to La Grange and the station there is closed also. It's evening now as we head toward Atlanta. Soon we're winding our way through the Hartsfeld International Airport and then we go over to Hopeville. Several people jump off quickly as a bus is waiting for them because we are running a little late. We join I-75 north into Atlanta. The Atlanta bus station is right next to Marta. So cool to have everything convenient like that. I had over an hour so I first check to make sure my luggage is in the right place for the right bus and then I get some supper. The station is fairly full and busses are heading off to all parts of the south and east. They pull up on a street by the side of the station. There is a guy who guides people to the right bus. They had this also at Dallas. It's rather nice when things get so busy. I stretch my legs and wander around the station and look up at Marta which hangs in the dark sky. We board a Southeastern Stages bus. This is my first time on this bus line. It is a separate company from Greyhound. We leave on I-20 to Augusta. It's about 11:00 PM when we reach Augusta and I get off to stretch. This is a Southeastern Stages bus station and is so cute and colonial. The whole town looks cute and colonial by streetlight. We leave on US-1 and US-78 and cross into South Carolina still on US-1 and US-78. US-1! I'm really in the east now. Our next stop in Aiken where some people are waiting for us on a bench outside a store. We get back on I-20 to Columbia. Columbia is a nice station with glass all around. It gives a more open look instead of the closed in look so many stations have. I'm really sleepy and barely wake up long enough to go to the bathroom. The Southeastern Stages are nice because they give slightly longer stops so you can get off more often. We stay off the interstate and on US-378 and US-76 on our way to Sumter. From Sumter we go up to Florence. We're on I-95 now and cross into North Carolina still on I-95. I'm dozing off and on through all this but at Fayetteville we all have to get off. They are taking the bus to be cleaned. This is normally an hour stop but we all get to sit here an extra hour to get us in sync with going off daylight savings time as of midnight. I get some breakfast as it's 4:45 AM or 5:45 depending on whether or not you have switched out of daylight savings time. It's a pretty good southern breakfast with grits and all, but I have to eat it out in the waiting room as the place is full with the passengers from other busses that are waiting. At least if we could sit on the bus we could sleep, but oh, no. I wander around and take a couple of pictures. of the bus station . Finally we're out of here. The bus is back outside and everyone is loaded on. We leave on US-301 and then onto I-95 again. The mists are rising and the fields are neat and cultivated. I'll bet even the wild areas look managed and neat around here. I like managed. Nature is fine but I really prefer at least a veneer of civilization. We stay on I-95 into Virginia. I really need to sleep but I'm so excited about getting to Washington DC that I can't do more than an occasional doze. Our first stop is Petersburg, VA. The bus stop is another trailways station since we are running on a Carolina Trailways schedule. The next stop is Richmond where we have a meal stop. This station shows both Trailways and Greyhound signs. There are more Trailways schedules in the east, though I do believe that Greyhound actually owns most of the Trailways companies. After an hour we're off again, on our way to Fredericksburg where I get my first picture of fall color. Next is Triangle and then Springfield where the bus stop is in the Brookfield Plaza by China Kitchen. I'm in the front seat and the driver likes to talk. She has a little girl and has real day care problems since her schedule is so erratic as she doesn't have the seniority to get her choice in runs. She started driving because her husband was a driver, but then they got divorced and that's life. She did find a family that takes care of her little girl at their house so she can drop her off no matter what her schedule and she can stay overnight. At last I-95 enters the District of Columbia. So exciting. The Pentagon is off to our right and all of a sudden the commuter lanes in the middle are full of runners. Hundreds of them. The driver says that this is the the Marine Corp Marathon. Everything slows to a halt because of some exit they're coming in on. Finally we exit into downtown DC and I'm finally in our nations capital. I have wanted to come here for so many years. We pull into the Greyhound Station and I'm there.
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