► We left the house heading down to Little Rock around 9 AM. Little Rock is approximately 120 highway miles to our south, a distance that can be driven in around three hours by me in our van. We take Arkansas Highway 65 down to Conway where we pick up Interstate 40 on into Little Rock.
► We made pretty good time during the first half of the trip, but then the stops began. We dropped Rusty and Bucket off for their weekend stay at the Puppy Park. Just a bit further down the road, we stopped for gasoline. Next came a stop at the Office Depot in Conway. After stocking up on office supplies, we proceeded to Wal-Mart so Jo could buy some cut flowers for her booth display. However, Jo found Wally World's cut flowers lacking so we headed down I-40 one exit to a large Kroger's where she made her flower purchase.
► Once back on I-40 we made it all the way down to Little Rock without stopping again. As a matter of fact, we didn't even stop in Little Rock -- just drove through and headed toward Memphis. We were staying with friends who live about ten miles outside of town and wanted to get our personal belongings out of the van before unloading and setting up at the convention center. By the time we finished getting unloaded at our friends' house, it was getting close to two o'clock. Jo fixed sandwiches and we ate lunch before getting back on the road again. We finally made it down the the Statehouse Convention Center in downtown Little Rock at 3 PM.
► Setting up is one of those jobs that can ever so easily expand to fill the time allotted for it, especially when we're doing a show where we know most of the other exhibitors and can easily get side tracked into visiting with friends. When pressed, we can set up both our booths -- including canopies -- in a little over two hours. We stayed at the convention center until nine o'clock and still weren't completely finished setting up our displays. We had no problems, just spent a lot of time piddling around and checking out what everyone else was doing.
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