through the cradle of the civil war

The Residence Inn in Roanoke, Virginia is, improbably, a palace of epic Southern proportions. “This is my favorite hotel,” I keep declaring, looking around at our giant suite, the fireplace and full kitchen and a pool where we drink cocktails made from the sweet tea vodka Megan is moving to her new house, along with the rest of her earthly posessions. “This is the best hotel of my entire life.”

Meg laughs at me as she checks us in, Lisa’s sunglasses perched on top of her head and our bags spread out all over the tiled lobby. “Please tell me that’s not true,” she says.

Which, okay, it’s not. It is a nice hotel, though. And nice hotels are important when you’re two nights into a road trip from Boston to Fort Smith, Arkansas with two of your book club bests and armed with only a bathing suit, a cooler full of hummus and Vitamin Water, and 600 channels of satellite radio. Small things starts to matter.  When we pull out on Thursday morning it’s a hundred degrees at nine in the morning, and I glance wistfully over my shoulder at the complimentary breakfast we’re leaving behind.

Luckily,  there are a carload of adventures to be had on the other side of the Mason-Dixon: we spend Friday night at the Grand Ole Opry and a steamy afternoon touring Graceland, stopping often for bathroom breaks and Sonic limeade. Every single bar we go into has a band. In Nashville Lisa saves my life with a band-aid magically procured from the depths of her purse while we wait in line for some ill-advised late night Frito pie: “And macaroni and cheese!” she instructs cheerfully, heading back to the table to wait for me; completely unprovoked, a kid in front of us in line tells us it’s his twenty-first birthday, and that his friends are making him go to Hooters even though he doesn’t want to. “And a goo-goo cluster.”

In Arkansas we hit the  strangest traffic jam I’ve ever encountered in my years on this planet, an hour-long standstill that seems to portend zombies or nuclear apocalypse, flat endless green on either side of the highway; eventually we pull off and take a back road, farmland and abandoned general stores, the sun settling a little bit lower in the sky. I toss my phone into my purse, lean my head against the window. We have miles and miles to go.