The night that we got there, it snowed. After living in the desert for as long as I could remember, it was quite a magical effect.

As I watched the great fat flakes fall from the sky, I knew without a doubt that I was beginning to fall in love with this enchanting place.

The night, besides the snow, was pretty uneventful. We were all tired from out three day car ride, and we mostly just wanted to sleep.

Because of the financial situation, we decided that we might as well start looking for a place to live right away. There didn't seem to be many apartment complexes here like there were in Vegas; there were just lots of houses. So we looked for houses.

The first day yielded little results. We didn't find many houses that were for rent... most of them were for sale. The ones that were for rent were either too small, too large, or just didn't seem to fit us. So, we returned to the Super 8, defeated and hungry.

The Super 8 motel in Mountain Home, Arkansas is in the lot in front of the Wells Fargo Bank, which, at that time, was across the street from the WalMart. Consequently, there was a Taco Bell on the other side of the WalMart.

Our little Plymouth was still piled full of all of our earthly possessions, so we thought we would just walk to Taco Bell before checking out the WalMart. My mother worked the night shift at WalMart, so we needed to see what it was like.

It turned out that the WalMart hads a kick-ass book section, which was definitely good. I have this thing for books. I love reading, and I don't particularly know why. I think it's the fact that you can sit for hours on end and just get lost in the words, the story of someone else's life. I think that maybe that' s the same mentality as reality T.V., like that line from that Jewel song. 'It's nice to see people more messed up than me'.

It's just so easy to forget your problems when you're knee deep in someone else's perilous escape from a man-eating swamp or battle with a deadly sea monster.

Also, reading gives your imagination a good workout, because you can imagine things the way that you see them. They may not turn out the same way as someone else's, but that's the beauty of it. It creates a small sense of individuality.

Okay, moving on. I'm sure that you don't want to listen to me ramble about the wonderful effects of reading, do you? Didn't think so.

We also found out while we were perusing the store that it was moving soon. It was going to relocate higher up on Highway 65. That was good, although it was a little on the outskirts of town. Next to the hick version of the freeway.

While we're on the subject of the Freeway...

The main freeway in Las Vegas (There are either two or three... I can never remember) is Highway 95. It's several miles long and has about eight lanes. It often is stopped up with traffic. Keeping that in mind, I'll describe the freeway in Mountain Home.

It's got four lanes, and it's about two miles long. It actually looks like a regular rural road... It's not even on any overpasses. I was surprised to see that, but on second thought I found it kind of sad.

Moving on...

So, after exploring the WalMart, we walked over to Taco Bell and got dinner. Then we went back to the hotel room and went directly to sleep, hoping for better luck on the housing front in the morning.

The next morning dawned bright and early. Have you ever noticed how beautiful it is when the sun reflects off the snow? All the little sparkles light up and hit you directly in the eye. And it's frikcin' cold, besides.

It had snowed more over the night, and it looked like it had actually stuck this time. This made driving conditions rather trecherous, so we really didn't want to go out that day unless we had to.

My Grandpa pulled out the phone book that was provided in the room and began looking for the phone directory. As you read, you notice that the differences between things as small as the phone book are totally different in Mountain Home than they are in Las Vegas, or really anywhere in the world.

I like to think of it as the town that time forgot.

Anyway, the phone book. In Mountain Home, it has about 150 pages. And that includes the surrounding areas. Sad, isn't it? Especially considering that in Las Vegas, the phone book has about 1000 pages, and that's just Las Vegas.

He finally found the school directory, and I had to laugh at the school name. Guyberry. Can you believe that? I couldn't at first. When you start to go there, you kind of forget the school name. But that's getting ahead of myself, isn't it?

So now that we had a school, all we needed was a place to live. Since it was so terrible outside, we got a paper and looked in there for houses.

Strictly by chance, we stumbled upon the add for a three bedroom two bath house. There was no picture.

We called the number, and the people said that although they were still renovating, we could come see it. They were pretty sure they'd be done with the kitchen ceiling in two day's time.

We piled into the car once more and drove off, to one 511 North Cardinal Lane.