2 Days On The Road
Oct. 3rd, 2021 09:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
waitingmanMid-south-west 2012...
Oct. 1 Monday – Chicago to Indianapolis
The decision has been made. We're not going across the Lakes to Niagara Falls & down to New York City from there. Instead, we are going to drop down to Tennessee, go through Georgia to South Carolina, then up to NYC via whatever takes our fancy along the way. So, packing & ready to go after breakfast. I have to say we're quite pleased to be leaving the Holiday Inn/Cass Hotel & their unfriendly & unhelpful staff, their disappearing doormen & their average ‘Continental’ breakfast trough, with its crap coffee & broken toaster. We were going to find a few places to look at in the city, but instead elected to leave town via the south-east door & head for Indianapolis. We’ll ‘do’ Chicago another time, when we have more of that commodity & can put together an itinerary of places to see, but now there’s a big loop to do through the South-Eastern states ahead of us & only about ten days to do it in, so off we went
It was only a couple of hours drive down the good old I90 & I94, but we picked up another hour along the way by crossing not only an unheralded State line into Indiana, but also another time zone. We’re now three hours ahead of the West coast where we started, so we didn’t arrive in Indianapolis until about 3pm local time. First stop was a Post Office to pick up some boxes for shipping excess goods & chattels back home & some stamps for the ever-increasing postcard collection we haven’t sent since San Francisco – the families must be wondering where we are by now. Our Post Mistress had what you would call the Indiana accent, which is kind of like the Texan accent, but with more consonants, but we were still able to converse effectively, so we must be acclimatising - at least linguistically. Post Office done, we did a ring-around of various motels, to check room prices & availability, but ended up at the good old, fairly reliable Super 8 in the south-east of town
Once checked in, we emptied the car & began sorting through what we need for the next couple of weeks & what we can send home. My cowboy boots from Denver were first into the box, not because I don’t like them, but because they were taking up so much space in the suitcase (& we’re going to ‘Boot World’ tomorrow, apparently the largest boot store in the country!!). Various souvenirs, excess clothing & all the Amazon.com orders we’d collected from Chris in San Francisco. This all made for one quite heavy box, so we’ll find out tomorrow if it’s worth sending, or just buying another suitcase to lug home instead
Julia had arranged to meet up with another friend from the ‘Net, so we changed into slightly warmer clothes, as it was raining & the temperature had dropped accordingly. Tomo Japanese Sushi & Hibachi Restaurant turned out to be a great place, with the requisite performing teppan-yaki chefs & fresh seafood flown in from Chicago. Hot Sake & a New Zealand white wine conspired to allow quite a lot of fine food down our necks. Rebecca was a nice dinner companion too, even if she couldn’t really explain who the Indiana Hoosiers were/are, or why they picked up that name. But she’s only been in Indianapolis for a few years, so we forgave her. After all, not even Wikipedia is absolutely sure – there are several possible reasons for the nickname & if you google 'Hoosiers', you just get a lot of references to the state football team... We also assured Rebecca that her accent wasn’t quite as pronounced as our Post Mistress – apparently she lives in dread of picking up the local accent... for some unknown reason - it's quite a pleasant accent really - not like the stereotypical whiney Bronx, or San Fernando 'Valley' accent, (best illustrated by Frank Zappa's song 'Valley Girl'), or those absolutely impenetrable southern accents from Alabama, or Louisiana, for which we'd need an interpreter if we get down that far...
To walk off some of that wonderful Japanese meal, we had our second adventure in Wal-Mart!! We really only needed packing tape & a marker to address the big box of excess, but of course came away with a few more things that just couldn’t be found anywhere else, or just couldn’t be resisted at the time – some of which went straight into the box when we returned to the motel afterwards
We just realised now that we completely forgot to meet up with another friend in Chicago, such was our negative experience of the town. Oops... sorry Lester!!
Oct 2. Tuesday – Indianapolis to Memphis
A long, rainy day in the saddle today, across & through five States:- Indiana, somehow back into Illinois, bits of Missouri & Arkansas & into Tennessee just after dark. We crossed the Mississippi twice, gaining an hour the first time, then losing it again on the second. As a result, I have no idea what time it is right now. Late, I’m guessing...
We continued our tradition of finding it difficult to get out of America’s larger cities. Indianapolis didn’t help much with its roadworks either, but we eventually landed on the right freeway & headed south-west towards Terre Haute & Boot City, which was a similar experience to Wal-Mart for us... we walked in & were a bit overwhelmed by the size of the place & all that was crammed into it
We made it out forty-five minutes later with a nice pair of ankle-length black boots, but without the formal frock-coat & white shirt I want to find for our November nuptials – they didn’t have my size... & Julia refused to even try the overly-frilly, Southern Belle-style, white wedding gown they had on display. Ah well, there’s always Nashville down the track for another attempt
On to Memphis then, after a quick lunch at Steak’n’Shake, the mid-Eastern equivalent of In’n’Out Burger on the West Coast. For once, a manageable-size meal that didn’t stuff us... though my milkshake filled up any remaining spaces. This was probably my pick of the fast-food places we've tried so far... Back on the interstate, the rain chased us out of Indiana & into Illinois, down the flat farm country until it began to let up in Missouri, where we got ahead of the cloudfront & the sunglasses finally came out for our trip through cotton country. The search for the perfect barn photo continues, but today’s tempting shots were all misty fields & trees with distant farmhouses. But the Interstate isn’t friendly to photography, with no safe places to stop when you really want to, so, unfortunately, those sights were only for the eyes, not the lens. As the sun set in Arkansas, I gave up trying to find a place to pull over safely to photograph it, so Julia took some shots with the point’n’shoot out the window as we rocketed along at 80mph... or about 130kmh. Fastest sunset shot ever...
Eventually we re-crossed the Mississippi & hit the outskirts of Memphis, Tennessee. The Super 8 Motel we booked while on the road, is close to the riverbank & surrounded by empty & derelict buildings, so there should be some interesting photo opportunities tomorrow. Having checked in & been given a cricket update by the Indian desk clerk (Australia beat India in a 20/20 match, so I'm not expecting any favours from the staff, or a discount rate!)), we dumped the bags in our room & headed out to Gus’s Fried Chicken a joint recommended by the USA Guide to Lonely Planets. This turned out to be in a less-than-glamorous neighbourhood, with a large, armed security guard outside, who also kept an eye on the parking lot - but the place itself was a great surprise. The Guide said waits of up to an hour were common, but worth it. We had a table within five minutes, drinks within seven & the food in twelve. Three ‘white’ pieces for me & three ‘dark’ pieces for Julia, though we swapped one each. And they had Guinness!! The dessert of a coconut pie was fantastic too. Afterwards I was taken by our waiter to thank the cooks & told them it was a good thing we live so far away; otherwise we’d be here all the time (2021 update: Since then, Gus has expanded into other States, but so far, not down to Australia... which is both disappointing & healthy for us!). They seemed pleased
As were we, when we discovered that Beale St was precisely forty-nine seconds drive away from Gus’s joint. Two corners, an easy park & we were within sight of the lights & earshot of a melange of R&B coming out of a dozen venues. After a close encounter with one of the large but friendly draught horses used to draw carriages around the area (& its chatty owner, hoping we’d take a ride), we took a walk, Marc Cohn-style down the street & back, then settled on BB King’s Blues Club, as it had the best-sounding band, a $3 cover charge & a good table available. We stayed for about a set & a half by the anonymous but fantastic band, also long enough for a couple of drinks, then wandered back to where we’d left Steve & went in search of bottled water, as we’d run out. Two closed Walgreen’s later, we had a chance encounter with Sun Studios (a plain-looking building on a nondescript corner, with a small neon sign), whereupon I jumped out of the car for a quick photo opportunity
Next, we found an open gas station that sold water by the case... along with other liquids & a fascinating magazine/newsletter thing called Busted!!, or 'Just Busted!!', or something like that... we really should have bought a copy, especially as it looked like some of the late-night clientele in the gas station were featured in its pages. Which is a bit unfair, as nobody looks their best under dodgy fluorescent lights at 11pm on an Autumn night, dressed in camo-patterned hoodies & jeans, with their hands in their pockets &... okay time to go. So we took our 24 pack of water, paid for fuel & headed back to the river, our hotel surrounded by derelict buildings & our room
Oct. 1 Monday – Chicago to Indianapolis
The decision has been made. We're not going across the Lakes to Niagara Falls & down to New York City from there. Instead, we are going to drop down to Tennessee, go through Georgia to South Carolina, then up to NYC via whatever takes our fancy along the way. So, packing & ready to go after breakfast. I have to say we're quite pleased to be leaving the Holiday Inn/Cass Hotel & their unfriendly & unhelpful staff, their disappearing doormen & their average ‘Continental’ breakfast trough, with its crap coffee & broken toaster. We were going to find a few places to look at in the city, but instead elected to leave town via the south-east door & head for Indianapolis. We’ll ‘do’ Chicago another time, when we have more of that commodity & can put together an itinerary of places to see, but now there’s a big loop to do through the South-Eastern states ahead of us & only about ten days to do it in, so off we went
It was only a couple of hours drive down the good old I90 & I94, but we picked up another hour along the way by crossing not only an unheralded State line into Indiana, but also another time zone. We’re now three hours ahead of the West coast where we started, so we didn’t arrive in Indianapolis until about 3pm local time. First stop was a Post Office to pick up some boxes for shipping excess goods & chattels back home & some stamps for the ever-increasing postcard collection we haven’t sent since San Francisco – the families must be wondering where we are by now. Our Post Mistress had what you would call the Indiana accent, which is kind of like the Texan accent, but with more consonants, but we were still able to converse effectively, so we must be acclimatising - at least linguistically. Post Office done, we did a ring-around of various motels, to check room prices & availability, but ended up at the good old, fairly reliable Super 8 in the south-east of town
Once checked in, we emptied the car & began sorting through what we need for the next couple of weeks & what we can send home. My cowboy boots from Denver were first into the box, not because I don’t like them, but because they were taking up so much space in the suitcase (& we’re going to ‘Boot World’ tomorrow, apparently the largest boot store in the country!!). Various souvenirs, excess clothing & all the Amazon.com orders we’d collected from Chris in San Francisco. This all made for one quite heavy box, so we’ll find out tomorrow if it’s worth sending, or just buying another suitcase to lug home instead
Julia had arranged to meet up with another friend from the ‘Net, so we changed into slightly warmer clothes, as it was raining & the temperature had dropped accordingly. Tomo Japanese Sushi & Hibachi Restaurant turned out to be a great place, with the requisite performing teppan-yaki chefs & fresh seafood flown in from Chicago. Hot Sake & a New Zealand white wine conspired to allow quite a lot of fine food down our necks. Rebecca was a nice dinner companion too, even if she couldn’t really explain who the Indiana Hoosiers were/are, or why they picked up that name. But she’s only been in Indianapolis for a few years, so we forgave her. After all, not even Wikipedia is absolutely sure – there are several possible reasons for the nickname & if you google 'Hoosiers', you just get a lot of references to the state football team... We also assured Rebecca that her accent wasn’t quite as pronounced as our Post Mistress – apparently she lives in dread of picking up the local accent... for some unknown reason - it's quite a pleasant accent really - not like the stereotypical whiney Bronx, or San Fernando 'Valley' accent, (best illustrated by Frank Zappa's song 'Valley Girl'), or those absolutely impenetrable southern accents from Alabama, or Louisiana, for which we'd need an interpreter if we get down that far...
To walk off some of that wonderful Japanese meal, we had our second adventure in Wal-Mart!! We really only needed packing tape & a marker to address the big box of excess, but of course came away with a few more things that just couldn’t be found anywhere else, or just couldn’t be resisted at the time – some of which went straight into the box when we returned to the motel afterwards
We just realised now that we completely forgot to meet up with another friend in Chicago, such was our negative experience of the town. Oops... sorry Lester!!
Oct 2. Tuesday – Indianapolis to Memphis
A long, rainy day in the saddle today, across & through five States:- Indiana, somehow back into Illinois, bits of Missouri & Arkansas & into Tennessee just after dark. We crossed the Mississippi twice, gaining an hour the first time, then losing it again on the second. As a result, I have no idea what time it is right now. Late, I’m guessing...
We continued our tradition of finding it difficult to get out of America’s larger cities. Indianapolis didn’t help much with its roadworks either, but we eventually landed on the right freeway & headed south-west towards Terre Haute & Boot City, which was a similar experience to Wal-Mart for us... we walked in & were a bit overwhelmed by the size of the place & all that was crammed into it
We made it out forty-five minutes later with a nice pair of ankle-length black boots, but without the formal frock-coat & white shirt I want to find for our November nuptials – they didn’t have my size... & Julia refused to even try the overly-frilly, Southern Belle-style, white wedding gown they had on display. Ah well, there’s always Nashville down the track for another attempt
On to Memphis then, after a quick lunch at Steak’n’Shake, the mid-Eastern equivalent of In’n’Out Burger on the West Coast. For once, a manageable-size meal that didn’t stuff us... though my milkshake filled up any remaining spaces. This was probably my pick of the fast-food places we've tried so far... Back on the interstate, the rain chased us out of Indiana & into Illinois, down the flat farm country until it began to let up in Missouri, where we got ahead of the cloudfront & the sunglasses finally came out for our trip through cotton country. The search for the perfect barn photo continues, but today’s tempting shots were all misty fields & trees with distant farmhouses. But the Interstate isn’t friendly to photography, with no safe places to stop when you really want to, so, unfortunately, those sights were only for the eyes, not the lens. As the sun set in Arkansas, I gave up trying to find a place to pull over safely to photograph it, so Julia took some shots with the point’n’shoot out the window as we rocketed along at 80mph... or about 130kmh. Fastest sunset shot ever...
Eventually we re-crossed the Mississippi & hit the outskirts of Memphis, Tennessee. The Super 8 Motel we booked while on the road, is close to the riverbank & surrounded by empty & derelict buildings, so there should be some interesting photo opportunities tomorrow. Having checked in & been given a cricket update by the Indian desk clerk (Australia beat India in a 20/20 match, so I'm not expecting any favours from the staff, or a discount rate!)), we dumped the bags in our room & headed out to Gus’s Fried Chicken a joint recommended by the USA Guide to Lonely Planets. This turned out to be in a less-than-glamorous neighbourhood, with a large, armed security guard outside, who also kept an eye on the parking lot - but the place itself was a great surprise. The Guide said waits of up to an hour were common, but worth it. We had a table within five minutes, drinks within seven & the food in twelve. Three ‘white’ pieces for me & three ‘dark’ pieces for Julia, though we swapped one each. And they had Guinness!! The dessert of a coconut pie was fantastic too. Afterwards I was taken by our waiter to thank the cooks & told them it was a good thing we live so far away; otherwise we’d be here all the time (2021 update: Since then, Gus has expanded into other States, but so far, not down to Australia... which is both disappointing & healthy for us!). They seemed pleased
As were we, when we discovered that Beale St was precisely forty-nine seconds drive away from Gus’s joint. Two corners, an easy park & we were within sight of the lights & earshot of a melange of R&B coming out of a dozen venues. After a close encounter with one of the large but friendly draught horses used to draw carriages around the area (& its chatty owner, hoping we’d take a ride), we took a walk, Marc Cohn-style down the street & back, then settled on BB King’s Blues Club, as it had the best-sounding band, a $3 cover charge & a good table available. We stayed for about a set & a half by the anonymous but fantastic band, also long enough for a couple of drinks, then wandered back to where we’d left Steve & went in search of bottled water, as we’d run out. Two closed Walgreen’s later, we had a chance encounter with Sun Studios (a plain-looking building on a nondescript corner, with a small neon sign), whereupon I jumped out of the car for a quick photo opportunity
Next, we found an open gas station that sold water by the case... along with other liquids & a fascinating magazine/newsletter thing called Busted!!, or 'Just Busted!!', or something like that... we really should have bought a copy, especially as it looked like some of the late-night clientele in the gas station were featured in its pages. Which is a bit unfair, as nobody looks their best under dodgy fluorescent lights at 11pm on an Autumn night, dressed in camo-patterned hoodies & jeans, with their hands in their pockets &... okay time to go. So we took our 24 pack of water, paid for fuel & headed back to the river, our hotel surrounded by derelict buildings & our room
