Huge Bras and Arkansas

Is this the Luxor? Oh no this is the Memphis pyramid...at 75mph

Today we awoke to a wonderfully more well lit Montgomery Bell. After spending the morning fixing our camp stove, Kim decided to wake her slumbering companion, and at a little after 8, we were off. Heading across I-40 at just a hair above the wonderful speed limit of 70, all was going well. This however was not to be. After passing through Memphis which is just barely holding on to the edge of civilization, and the border of Tennessee and Arkansas coincidentally, we crossed the rather unimpressive breadth of Mighty Mississip' (don't get me wrong I read Huck Finn, I've seen the riverboat casinos, it's just that this particular stretch was...well not that wide). Smooth sailing was all we had on our radar, until about a 5 miles before the town of Brinkley, AK. All of a sudden we noticed the battery light chime on the dash. Next thing we knew (after consulting the manual to see what exactly this indication indicated) all of the lights were lighting the dash, followed by all the dials, speedometer and tachometer moving in synchronization with the power windows, and finally a flat line of all our displays. We exited the highway and coasted in a dead car to O"Reilly auto parts.

JR, so kind to assist us, charged our battery for a half hour and then determined that it was in fact dead and was--not the alternator--the cause of our problem. 65 bucks later we were off...but alas the light comes back on...the dreaded red battery light.

After consulting with JR, who assures us that the alternator is not the problem, we head up to the fine boys at E&J's auto shop who inform us that our alternator is in fact the problem. So back to O'Reillys we head to get a new alternator, then back to E&J to install it, and then...a hundred degrees later and as many dollars, we're back on the highway...stuck in a traffic jam...with--get this--the dreaded red battery light back to haunt us in our dead standstill of an Arkansas auto showdown. Finally traffic and the red light both magically disappear and we beelined for the Oklahoma. Landing about 30 miles inside the border, we made camp at a KOA in Sallisaw and rested preparing for another day on the road out west.