The Daughters, old What’s His Name, and I traveled to Arkansas and Mississippi this past week to attend a family farm meeting, visit with aunts, uncles, and cousins, eat lots of Southern cuisine, and then hurry back to Kansas.

We all had a swell time. We hit lots of roadside antique malls and junk shops on the way down to the family farm — so many that the trip took two days. At one point, the Married Daughter started mumbling about needing a U-Haul trailer. However, we managed to squeeze everything into the mini-van we rented and just kept on moving.

I think we ate all the catfish in Arkansas — if you are headed in that direction, you might wait a week or two until they catch some more. As usual, it was to-die-for.

The Daughters and What’s His Name spent a day in the Mississippi delta soaking up the blues music for which the area is famous. In Clarksdale, they took pictures of the famed Crossroads where blues singer Robert Johnson reportedly sold his soul to the devil, ate at Abe’s Rib Shack right next door, and wandered into the nightclub, Ground Zero, where they encountered the owner, Morgan Freeman, and an entourage filming a political message.

Vacations (when it all goes right) are worth their weight in gold. This was one of them. I even learned a great deal about technology that now comes as standard equipment in automobiles. Wow. I know I am out of the loop, but I did figure out some stuff. The rest might come with practice. I will have to think about that!

We all made a pact to buy a lottery ticket at every stop if the merchant had them. I am pretty sure one of us will strike it rich when we check the numbers. We had to swear we would share our prize money — we will see just who sticks to the plan and who doesn’t.

All in all, it was a wonderful five days and I hope we can do it again next year.

However, I must tell you it was certainly nice to get back to familiar soil early Sunday evening. The best part was driving through Fredonia under sunny skies and temperatures of better than 80 degrees. To the west, the sky was blue-grey and we could tell rain was falling! About a half an hour later the windshield wipers were on high and the temperature had dropped to 51 degrees. We enjoyed a dramatic Flint Hills storm all the way north to El Dorado. Good to be back.

— Susan Marshall