2018 Trip 3: KY and TN: Caves and Crafts, Booze and Bluegrass (Music and Horses): March 16

Champaign, IL. March 16, 2018

This trip will last six weeks, possibly to be our longest of 2018. The primary goal is to spend more time in Kentucky and Tennessee with a week in Miami Beach, FL. We are calling the trip: “Caves (Mammoth Cave) and Crafts (handmade Appalachian crafts), Booze (for bourbon distilleries) and Bluegrass (for the music and Thoroughbred horses).

Approximate route for 2018 Trip 3.

Today, Friday is a travel day with no real stops to sightsee; that will begin tomorrow. Our initial route is an old familiar one, I-94 out of the Twin Cities down through Illinois on I-39. Thus, breakfast was on the road and lunch was at the largest Culver’s in Edgerton WI (which we had been at before). Dinner was different, a lenten fish fry at St.Patrick’s Church in Champaign. The fish for dinner was one of the tastiest we have experienced this Lenten season.

Only incident of note, stopping at a rest stop in north central Illinois, we came out of the rest room to observe two young college students, men, examining our car, even looking under the car. Our first thought: “Oh, s***, they hit our car and damaged it.” We went over to talk with them and to understand their concern. They were discussing how the car was making a strange sound and the young men thought a piece of the car was hitting the front passenger tire. It took several minutes for them to realize they might be right about the sound but they had the wrong car. Evidently the young men were riding with another student, a woman, and could not well identify the car they were riding in.

The guys were tossing swords back and forth, evidently props from their circus studies at Illinois State University at Normal. Evidently the intent on catching the swords disrupted their car identification skills. We passed pleasantries after the clarification and headed back on the road.

Ed and Chris

Chris has decided to add a daily addition to our travel blog.
Epilogue: Snippets on life in America from Chris
Day 1: We decided to start this trip early today and get breakfast on the road. Around 9, we stopped for breakfast at a fast-food restaurant in WI. We went in and 8 elderly women were seated around a table enjoying morning coffee and conversation. Around the corner from them was a group (eventually 12) of elderly men with coffee and occasional breakfast sandwich; jeans, working boots, occasional military cap and an exciting conversation at one end of the tables was about bees. Welcome to McDonald’s.