Mission Accomplished

I'm happy to report that the goal has been met, all 50 states before 30 with over a month to spare!  Today I visited Louisiana and Mississippi to finish off the list.  
The midway point of today was Monroe, LA.  When I got to town I was starving but first I had to fix some technical issues.  My iPhone car charger wasn't working and my battery was at 20% after half a day of driving and using GPS!  I suspected the car fuses since my charger had worked fine last time and the fuse in that looked okay.  Unfortunately, the car didn't have a fuse puller or extra fuses that I could find.  Fortunately, the Monroe Napa was nice enough to loan me some needle nose pliers and I was able to switch out fuses with the seat heater fuse and successfully charge my phone.  No thanks to Alamo, I would have been quite annoyed had I paid extra money to rent their GPS and couldn't have even used it.  Seems like something they should check out before renting!
Disaster averted, I went in search of lunch.  It was 1pm and I usually eat early (11:30ish) so I was quite starving by now.  Unfortunately the place I had hoped to eat was closed on Sundays.  I really should have checked it out beforehand since it seems like a lot of places here are closed on Sundays although I'm not sure my brain had really registered that it was Sunday anyway - my internal calendar is screwed up from taking Friday off and leaving on a trip on Saturday.  After consulting yelp, I ended up at Athena which was Greek/Lebanese and a good compromise.  I pretty much inhaled a fattoush and chicken shawarma salad!

Mississippi was next on the list.  I choose Greenville as my destination.  The other choice was Vicksburg but it was a little farther and I had seen it on the news as one of the areas where flooding was pretty bad so I figured it would be best to avoid it and head north.  After crossing the Mississippi River, I entered state #50!

I went up on the levee and checked out the river.  There was some flooding of the riverboat casino buildings on the far side of the levee but fortunately the water had stayed contained here and the town itself was dry.  Even just this small amount of flooding was kind of jarring to see, so sad for all those who have lost their homes down here...

So my adventure ended on a bit of a somber note but overall it was a good visit.  I'm very glad to be through the list though and able to travel when and where I really want regardless of if it's in the 'plan'!
My the time I got back to Little Rock it was on the late side and I wasn't up for another restaurant meal so I hit up the Whole Foods.  They didn't have a hot bar but did have a very good salad bar.  I also got some apples (one for tonight and one for tomorrow).  I was amazed at how how much I absolutely craved an apple once I saw them (I eat one pretty much every day at home).  The salad was a little oily for my tastes since I loaded up a bit too much on the raw kale in evoo but still delicious.  It's amazing how you can just throw everything together and somehow it just goes.  I wonder if they give a lot of thought to making sure all the various options are complimentary or if it just kind of works out that way? The salad was also so pretty, tons of colors!

Anxious to get home although not anxious for work, I thought I was going to have an easy half day of training but checking my email it looks like the training is off and there's a minor fire drill going on, so it will be right back into the craziness!