Road trip: Of reunions, whims and 'Duck Dynasty'

It’s good to be able to take a break and clear your head, especially with a road trip. It’s even better when you just decide to do something on a whim.

A couple of weeks ago, Kim and I went to Texas for a family reunion. That part was planned. One of my cousins, Ashley Powell, thought the family needed to get together since it had been years since we’d had a reunion. In recent years, too many gettogethers were because of sad circumstances. We used to have reunions every August because so many of us had birthdays or anniversaries in August, so we revived it.

Now, while we were having rain of Noah-like proportions here, Texas has been in an extended dry spell. As in pastures turned brown, crunchy yards, bone dry. I have to admit, though, that having gone through day after day of rain, it was a bit of relief for us. At least for a day. The rest of our trip it rained wherever we went; so much so I suggested to Kim that we become traveling rainmakers since it seemed to be following us.

Anyway, the reunion was at another cousin’s house outside DeKalb, and while we had a description we weren’t exactly sure where it was. We stopped at one place that sort matched the description —brown house, white fence —and pulled into the drive to check. For some reason, dryness tends to attract grasshoppers, and the guy who lived at this place had a grasshopper ranch. He could have started a bait shop selling only grasshoppers with an apparent endless source of bait. He could have rented out a biblical plague of grasshoppers.

Grasshoppers hopped on our car and windshield. They hopped, jumped and scattered as I walked up to the door, the grass crunching underfoot (at least I thought it was the grass). As it turned out, we were at the wrong house; Trey’s was a little further down the road, so off we went, finding it with no problem then.

It was a good family reunion, getting to see cousins I hadn’t seen in a while, sharing fellowship and great home-cooked food. If you haven’t had a reunion with your family, you really should consider having one.

After the reunion, we started back to Arkansas. Initially, we’d planned to stop and visit one of Kim’s old friends, but that plan changed. So, there we were just the other side of Hope, not really ready to go home since we both were off the upcoming week. We’d been saving our nickels for our time off, and we both thought there should be something we could do besides just go back home.

Then, a light went off in our heads. I told Kim were really weren’t that far from Monroe, La., home of the “Duck Dynasty” Robertson family and their Duck Commander plant. Looking at each other, Kim and I grinned. “What the heck?” I said (or words to that effect). “Let’s do it.”

And we turned off the interstate at Hope and headed for Louisiana. We really hadn’t done anything like that since Eli and Amelia were born, so off we went. I texted Amelia that we were off on an adventure. (Adventure is what you make it.)

We drove the back roads through southern Arkansas and into northern Louisiana, which for HBO and Charlaine Harris fans also is “True Blood” territory, although we didn’t encounter any bloodsuckers other than a few mosquitoes. It’s a very different terrain than the Ozarks, but it’s beautiful in its own way. Roads are so straight you can see oncoming vehicles a mile or more away.

At Monroe —West Monroe, technically —we found a place for the night, and the next day went to Duck Commander headquarters. It’s off a main road through town, and not as isolated as it sometimes appears on A&E, but it’s the real thing. The name’s on the corner of the building, the loading dock where Jase, Si and company created a duck pond in the parking lot is there, and the decoys are on the roof. In the adjacent parking lot, we noticed the car in front of us had an Ontario license plate, to give you an idea how wide the “Duck Dynasty” influence is.

Most of the building is a factory and company offices, but on the side familiar to TV viewers there’s a shop stocked with all kinds of Duck Commander and “Duck Dynasty” goodies in what once must have been a warehouse area. (And for those who remember the episode, Mountain Man apparently didn’t get the air conditioning fixed because it was cooled by a couple of big fans.) The checkout area is a little cooler, with posters for duck hunting videos the Robertsons made before TV fame came along and a duck call display. We even saw a flyer for an upcoming event the Robertsons were having at the local college and there on it was a picture of First Day, the Mountain Home singing group that was going to open the event.

We got some T-shirts to bring home, especially since Amelia threatened to stop speaking to us for going there without her, and took some pictures. Then it was back on the road, with a thunder storm following us to Vicksburg, and another set of storms almost blowing us off the highway as we drove to Tunica to spend one more night before heading home. (On a weekday, you can get a hotel room at a casino for $32, which is quite a bargain, even better than Motel 6.)

Our final leg to Mountain Home took us through the Delta and back to the Ozarks. On the way, Kim was driving and still was able to spot a man parked on the side of the road with okra in those little cartons —and nary a sign in sight —turn around and go back to buy a batch to fix when we got home. Nothing like fresh okra.

As road trips go, this was a relatively short one, but it did so much for our spirits and clearing the cobwebs from our minds. Sometimes, such remedies as a road trip are just what you need.