Arkadelphia, Tupelo, and a Droid

We hung around Denton for a few days so we could celebrate Deidra's 19th birthday and take care of some last minute business, and left there on Tuesday the 25th of October. We drove to Arkadelphia, AR where we stopped at a very nice Corps of Engineers park. We stayed two nights since rain was forecast. That's when we found the leak in the freshly painted trailer. They had not sealed the roof properly where they added the new wall/roof radius.

While in Arkadelphia, Dianna did some genealogy research. One of her ancestors was a Confederate governor of the state, and he was from there. There is a lot of history about him in the town, including his original law office which has been preserved.

We then drove to Tupelo, MS where we planned to ride the scooter on the Natchez Trace. Unfortunately, I came down with a bad cold and did nothing for 2 days. The 3rd day I finally got dressed and we visited the Natchez Trace Visitor Center, just north of Tupelo, and we made the obligatory visit to Elvis's birthplace.

There is not a lot to see unless you want to pay to go in the house and visit the museum. We've never been huge fans, so decided to pass. We came, we saw.

While in Arkadelphia my Motorola RAZR died. I have had it for many years so it served its purpose. I purchased a Droid Bionic smart phone to replace it. It's a nice phone that does a lot, but I'm not sure I really get the love that some people seem to exhibit. This has one of the largest screens available, but it is still very small print, even when enlarged. I'm sure I will find I use it more as time goes on, but it is not going to replace my laptop.

The biggest reason I went with this particular phone is that it is 4G, and because Verizon is currently running a little known promotion. For $30 per month they will enable the hot spot feature, and include unlimited data for life! I've been thinking about purchasing a cellular connection to compliment or eventually replace my satellite internet. This deal made it a no brainer.

I have now had an opportunity to use the hotspot in a 4G area. I can tell you that it screams. Even in a good 3G area it is much faster than satellite for small amount of data, mostly because of less latency. For large files the satellite is still better due to some recent improvements from HughesNet.

That's it for this part. The next post will cover our adventures on the Natchez Trace.